See Dick and Jane free
Given how much "Dick and Jane" have been used sardonically, one might think Zerna Sharp's schoolbook characters were already public domain.
By John Mark Ockerbloom
https://everybodyslibraries.com/2025/12/23/see-dick-and-jane-free/
More information about Dick and Jane:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_and_Jane
A Forgotten Louisa May Alcott Story Showcases the Author’s Twist on Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’
"Written in 1882, “A Christmas Dream, and How It Came True,” covered many of the same themes as Dickens’ classic, albeit with a different audience in mind"
This story is in "Lulu's LIbrary, Volume I" at PG:
#OTD in 1849.
American writer Edgar Allan Poe died under mysterious circumstances at Washington Medical College four days after being found on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, in a delirious and incoherent state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Edgar_Allan_Poe
Books by Edgar Allan Poe at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/481
"Tupi or not tupi - That is the question."
Manifesto Antropófago, 1928.
Brazilian poet, novelist and cultural critic Oswald de Andrade died #OTD in 1954.
Andrade was one of the founders of Brazilian modernism and a member of the Group of Five, along with Mário de Andrade, Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral and Menotti del Picchia. He participated in the Modern Art Week (Semana de Arte Moderna).
“I love winter… I love the peace of the nature reserve with its labyrinths of bare branches and its startling sunsets. I love the blitz of wee birds at the feeders in the garden. I’m not so keen on the damp grey days, I admit. So It’s no hardship to stay at my desk.”
—Val McDermid on how winter fuels her creative process – via @literaryhub
@writingcommunity
https://lithub.com/ice-and-inspiration-an-ode-to-writing-in-winter-from-val-mcdermid/
#Scottish #literature #writing #winter #creativity #crimefiction
#OTD in 1893.
Jerome K. Jerome founds To-Day, "A weekly magazine-journal", in London. However, he had to withdraw from both publications (The Idler) because of financial difficulties and a libel suit.
Books by Jerome K. Jerome at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173
Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tolkien
Michael D.C. Drout Remembers the Impact of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit on His Childhood
https://lithub.com/making-sense-of-middle-earth-exploring-the-world-of-j-r-r-tolkien/
The debut of a dramatic duo
Moss Hart wrote the first draft of Once in a Lifetime, a comedy about Hollywood's transition to "talkies", as a 25-year-old unknown.
By John Mark Ockerbloom
https://everybodyslibraries.com/2025/12/24/the-debut-of-a-dramatic-duo/
More information about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_in_a_Lifetime_(play)
Yeats and the Occult Imagination
Beneath his poems lay a lifelong devotion to magic, divination, and a visionary system that shaped his most prophetic work.
By: Gus Mitchell
https://daily.jstor.org/yeats-and-the-occult-imagination/
Yeats at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1719
#art #history:
‘kiss me & you will see how important i am.’
i'm wishing a sketchy birthday to la plath, born #otd in 1932 - &, even though i've not a chance in high hades of achieving a scintilla of the written eloquence that she displayed, here's my scribbled ode. [cheeky wee thread follows]
#sylviaPlath #illustration #poet #literature #poetry
Islands of the Imagination
By Livia Gershon
A short history of islands as sites of political escape and reinvention, from the myth of Atlantis to modern seasteading.
Original article (from the archives):
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43876781?mag=islands-of-the-imagination
Atlantis at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/1523
Three women translators who bridged cultures
Stories of Birgitte Thott, Sarah Austin, and Émilie du Châtelet.
by Małgorzata Szynkielewska via @Europeanaeu
https://www.europeana.eu/en/stories/three-women-translators-who-bridged-cultures
Franz Kafka’s papers metamorphose into National Library exhibit.
Wide-ranging exhibition ‘Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author’ features the institution’s singular archives and marks 100 years since the Czech author’s death
By Jessica Steinberg
https://www.timesofisrael.com/franz-kafkas-papers-metamorphose-into-national-library-exhibit/
In December 1891.
Thomas Hardy writes "The Son's Veto" (collected in Life's Little Ironies), which he regards as his best short story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life%27s_Little_Ironies
Life's Little Ironies at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3047
Banned in Texas
Struggle over academic freedom in Texas state universities has a long history. Today it's often over race and gender; in the 1940s, it was over things like John Dos Passos's USA trilogy.
By John Mark Ockerbloom
https://everybodyslibraries.com/2025/12/27/banned-in-texas/
John Dos passos at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2015
Edgar Allan Poe’s Mechanical Imagination
Behind The Raven’s melancholy lies a theory of composition shaped by magazines, machines, and modernity.
By: Danny Robb
The Raven at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14082
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17192
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25525
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45484
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55749
In November 1907.
While tutoring a Trieste businessman in English, James Joyce reveals that he is a writer, and his pupil, known to Joyce as Ettore Schmitz, proves to be the published novelist Italo Svevo. A literary friendship ensues.
In November 1852.
Leo Tolstoy's debut novel, Childhood («Детство», Detstvo), is published under the initials L. N. in this month's issue of the Saint Petersburg literary journal Sovremennik.
The erotic poems of Bilitis
A lush translation of this late-discovered lesbian poet added to the legacy of Sappho, but there was a trickster at work
by Cat Lambert
https://aeon.co/essays/how-a-playful-literary-hoax-illuminates-classical-queerness
Les Chansons de Bilitis at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4708
"[...] people always live for ever when there is any annuity to be paid them."
#OTD in 1811.
Jane Austen publishes her first novel: Sense and Sensibility at her own expense in 3 volumes, priced at 15 s., in Thomas Egerton's Military Library.
In November 1868.
Robert Browning's narrative poem The Ring and the Book begins four-part publication by Smith, Elder & Co. in London. It is a major commercial and critical success.
O come, let all 4,850 of us adore him
In 1925 the Associated Glee Clubs of America put on a concert like no other. 15 choral groups, with over 850 singers in all, came together in New York's Metropolitan Opera House to sing a program broadcast on radio across America.
By John Mark Ockerbloom
https://everybodyslibraries.com/2025/12/25/o-come-let-all-4850-of-us-adore-him/
About Adeste Fideles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Come,_All_Ye_Faithful
Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive
The Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive contains over 3000 illustrations from significant editions of Shakespeare's plays in the Victorian period.
by Michael John Goodman (thanks @Ross)
https://shakespeareillustration.org/
Up in the morning’s no for me,
Up in the morning early;
When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,
I’m sure it’s winter fairly…
—“Up in the Morning Early”, by Robert Burns – poet of the people 🫡
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/morning-early/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #18thCentury #RobertBurns #winter
Book launch
Ali Smith: GLYPH
29 Jan, Portobello Bookshop, Edinburgh, & online – ticketed
Ghosts don’t exist.
They don’t. End of.
Story, however.
It is haunting.
Everything tells it.
GLYPH is Ali Smith’s most soulful, playful & vital novel yet, a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world. Smith will be in conversation with Jess Orr.
https://www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/ali-smith-glyph
