"O Day! he cannot die
When thou so fair art shining!
O Sun, in such a glorious sky,
So tranquilly declining;..."
#OTD in 1844.
Emily Brontë writes the poem "A Death-Scene". It was published in 1846 in a book collecting poetry by Brontë and her siblings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Death-Scene
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1019
#OTD in 1851.
The French coup d'état of 1851 prompts Victor Hugo to be a leader of an unsuccessful insurrection against it. He is forced into exile, initially to Brussels, then Jersey, from which he was expelled for supporting L’Homme. He finally settled with his family at Hauteville House in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, where he would live in exile from October 1855 until 1870.
Books by Victor Hugo at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/85
#OTD in 1928.
Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness, published by Jonathan Cape in London, is tried and convicted on the grounds of obscenity under the Hicklin test, after a campaign against it by James Douglas in the Sunday Express.
#OTD in 1920.
D. H. Lawrence's novel Women in Love appears in a limited U.S. subscribers' edition. This first was available only to subscribers, due to the controversy caused by Lawrence's previous work, The Rainbow (1915).
Women in Love at PG
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/4240
Is Oedipus Rex the Mother of All Drama?
Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (aka Oedipus the King) … Is it the mother of all Western drama? The father? Or both?
By Thom Delapa
https://www.thecollector.com/oedipus-rex-mother-drama/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_Rex
Oedipus King of Thebes by Sophocles at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27673
#OTD in 1901.
The first Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded, to French poet Sully Prudhomme.
He devoted the bulk of the money he received to the creation of a poetry prize awarded by the Société des gens de lettres. He also founded, in 1902, the Société des poètes français with Jose-Maria de Heredia and Leon Dierx.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sully_Prudhomme
Books by Sully Prudhomme at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/7695
Arthur Schopenhauer’s Idealism: Is Our World Just a Dream?
Schopenhauer argued that the world is but an intricate dream, and what he suggested lies beyond it may shock you.
By Maysara Kamal
https://www.thecollector.com/arthur-schopenhauers-idealism-is-our-world-just-a-dream/
Books by Arthur Schopenhauer at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3648
#OTD in 1854.
Wilkie Collins's "The Lawyer's Story of a Stolen Letter", published as "The Fourth Poor Traveller" in The Seven Poor Travellers – the Household Words special Christmas number – is the first non-police detective fiction published in Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkie_Collins
The Lawyer's Story of a Stolen Letter at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1626
#OTD in 1847.
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey are published in a three-volume set under the pen names of Ellis and Acton Bell respectively, in London by T. C. Newby. Wuthering Heights will be Emily's only published novel, as she dies a year later, aged 30.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuthering_Heights
Wuthering Heights at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/768
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Grey
Agnes Grey at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/767
Pàdraig MacAoidh: In Conversation at The Linen Hall, Belfast
Writer Róise Ní Bhaoill talks to Pàdraig MacAoidh about his work; the literary, linguistic and cultural connections between Scotland and the island of Ireland, to which he has a strong connection; and about what he hopes to achieve in his role as Scotland’s national poet.
The burn was big wi’ spate,
An’ there cam’ tum’lin doon
Tapsalteerie the half o’ a gate,
Wi’ an auld fish-hake an’ a great muckle skate,
An’ a lum hat wantin’ the croon!
—David Rorie, “The Lum Hat Wantin’ the Croon”
As things start to thaw in the north-east, mind how ye go…
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #song #20thcentury #humour #Scots #Scotslanguage
"Man is not truly one, but truly two."
#OTD (and January 9) in 1886.
Robert Louis Stevenson's horror novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appears in New York and London. Almost 40,000 copies are sold in the first six months. By 1901, it was estimated to have sold over 250,000 copies in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/43
"Ah! the death of the poor, the empty entrails, howling hunger, the animal appetite that leads one with chattering teeth to fill one’s stomach with beastly refuse in this great Paris, so bright and golden! "
Chapter XII
#OTD in 1877.
Émile Zola's L'Assommoir, 7th in his novel sequence Les Rougon-Macquart, is first published in book format a few weeks after its serialisation ends in Le Bien public (Paris).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Assommoir
L´Assommoir at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=L%27Assommoir&submit_search=Go%21
“A man ready, willing and able to walk bravely into familiar genre territory and then ingeniously rearrange everything that makes it familiar, Scotsman Alan Sharp proved himself an astute chronicler of America’s dark heart, and captured it with a stunningly honed outsider’s eye.”
—FilmInk celebrates author & screenwriter Alan Sharp (1934–2013) – born #OTD, 12 Jan
1/5
Oidhche Challain: No admission without a rhyme
Happy Old New Year!
After the 1750 Calendar Act changed the date of New Year’s Day, some Gaels – to make sure they didn’t miss it – chose to celebrate both. Dr Dòmhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart discusses the once ubiquitous Highland tradition of Oidhche Challain:
https://www.whfp.com/2020/01/08/oidhche-challain-no-admission-without-a-rhyme/
#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poetry #tradition #NewYear #Highlands #Hebrides #OldNewYear
#OTD in 1835.
Abolitionist Susan Paul officiates at a meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS) in Boston. Later in the year, her Memoir of James Jackson becomes the earliest-known published narrative by an African-American woman and the first account documenting the life of a free black child in the United States.
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
This video from the London Review of Books (LRB) celebrates the Folio’s 400th anniversary by documenting an audacious attempt to replicate the methods used to print the book at the time of its original release.
https://aeon.co/videos/replicating-shakespearean-era-printing-brings-its-own-dramas-and-comedy
" I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
Have His Carcase
English author, poet, and playwright Dorothy L. Sayers died #OTD in 1957. Sayers is most famous for her detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, an aristocratic amateur sleuth. She wrote several plays, including The Zeal of Thy House and The Man Born to Be King. Sayers also translated major works, notably Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Dorothy L. Sayers at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/45867
#OTD in 1824.
The first issue of a radical quarterly founded by Jeremy Bentham, The Westminster Review, is published in London.
It was published from 1824 to 1914. James Mill was one of the driving forces behind the liberal journal until 1828. Some notable contributors: George Eliot, Harriet Martineau, John Stuart Mill, Mary Shelley, Herbert Spencer, John Tyndall, Caroline Cornwallis, Julia Wedgwood, Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy.
"Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it."
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Dame Agatha Christie died #OTD 50 years ago.
She wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie
Agatha Christie at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/451
HAPPY PUBLIC DOMAIN DAY!
Books which will enter the US public domain:
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold (Steinbeck's first novel)
Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story
Patrick Hamilton, Rope
#OTD in 1818.
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus first appears anonymously in London.
Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
1818 edition at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/41445
1831 edition
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/42324
#OTD in 1873.
Louisa May Alcott's family satire "Transcendental Wild Oats" is published in the newspaper The Independent.
The work was first published in a New York newspaper in 1873, and reprinted in 1874, 1876, and 1915 and after. Alcott's view of male arrogance and female exploitation in this piece is paralleled in her novel Work, published in the same year as Transcendental Wild Oats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Wild_Oats
Transcendental Wild Oats at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34920
Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure criticised university elitism – it still rings true today
by Shelley Galpin
Jude the Obscure at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/153
"Thus, after pursuing those images, I overtook them. Now I know that I invented them. But inventing is a creation, not a lie."
La coscienza di Zeno (1923)
#OTD in 1928.
Italo Svevo (Aron Schmitz), returning from an Alpine resort to Trieste, suffers a car accident. He dies next day leaving his novel Il Vegliardo (The Old Man) unfinished in mid-word.
