#OTD in 1911.
The U.K. Copyright Act consolidates copyright law in the British Empire and confirms the six libraries to which a copy of every book published in the U.K. must be deposited by the publisher: the British Museum Library (London); the Bodleian Library (Oxford); the Advocates Library (Edinburgh); the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Trinity College Dublin; and Cambridge University Library.
" 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
#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
J. J. Thomson, who was born #OTD in 1856, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 for his discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be found.
Thomson was also a teacher, and seven of his students went on to win Nobel Prizes: Ernest Rutherford, Lawrence Bragg, Charles Barkla, Francis Aston, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Owen Richardson and Edward Victor Appleton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Thomson
Books by J.J. Thomson at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/38322
It's ALIVE!
#OnThisDay, 1 Jan 1818, Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' was published anonymously. Her gothic novel was also one of the first science-fiction novels.
#ReadMoreWomen #LiteraryWomen
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons
"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.
"THE times that tried men's souls," are over- and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished."
#OTD in 1776.
Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled "The American Crisis". Paine signed the pamphlets with the pseudonym, "Common Sense".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Crisis
The American Crisis at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3741
#OTD in 1864 (until April 16).
James Payn publishes his most popular story, Lost Sir Massingberd, in Chambers's Journal. He follows it in the magazine (August 6 – December 24) by Married Beneath Him. Lost Sir Massingberd was published as a book in two volumes in 1864.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Sir_Massingberd
Lost Sir Massingberd at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37170
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37171
"Nothing is stranger to man than his own image."
#OTD in 1921.
World premiere of the science fiction play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti) by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in a theater in Hradec Králové. It introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
R.U.R. at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/59112
Fra banc to banc, fra wod to wod, I rin
Ourhailit with my feble fantasie,
Lyk til a leif that fallis from a trie
Or til a reid ourblawin with the wind…
—“Sonet of Venus & Cupid”, by Mark Alexander Boyd (1563–1601), born #OTD, 13 Jan
published in THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF SCOTTISH VERSE, @canongatebooks 2021
https://canongate.co.uk/books/3267-the-golden-treasury-of-scottish-verse/
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #sonnet #16thcentury #17thcentury #earlymodern #Scots #Scotslanguage
#OTD in 1893.
The first story featuring the private detective character Sexton Blake, "The Missing Millionaire", appears in Alfred Harmsworth's new boys' story paper The Halfpenny Marvel, written by Harry Blyth under the pen-name Hal Meredeth.
Sexton Blake adventures were featured in a wide variety of British and international publications from 1893 to 1978, comprising more than 4,000 stories by some 200 different authors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexton_Blake
"What remains?" cried Ivanhoe; "Glory, maiden, glory! which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name."
#OTD in 1819.
Walter Scott's popular Waverley Novel Ivanhoe is published anonymously in 3 volumes by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, dated 1820. A chivalric romance set in 12th-century England, it represents a move away from Scott setting his fiction in Scotland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/82
#OTD in 1895.
The première of Oscar Wilde's comedy An Ideal Husband takes place at the Haymarket Theatre in London. In April, on the last day of the Haymarket run, Wilde was arrested for gross indecency; his name was removed from the playbills and programmes when the production transferred to the Criterion Theatre, where it ran for a further 13 performances, from 13 to 27 April.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Ideal_Husband
An Ideal Husband at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/885
#OTD in 1846.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's first original novel, Poor Folk, is published in the St. Petersburg Collection.
The first English translation was provided by Lena Milman in 1894, with an introduction by George Moore, cover art design by Aubrey Beardsley and publication by London's Mathews and Lane. It is the first novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, written over the span of nine months between 1844 and 1845.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Folk
Poor Folk at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2302
#OTD in 1787.
William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.
Orbiting at a much greater distance from Uranus are the ten known irregular moons. The planet's magnetosphere is highly asymmetric and has many charged particles, which may be the cause of the darkening of its rings and moons.
Russian feminist and activist Maria Trubnikova was born #OTD in 1835.
Trubnikova hosted a women-only salon which became a center of feminist activism. Alongside Anna Filosofova and Nadezhda Stasova, whom she mentored, Trubnikova was one of the earliest leaders of the Russian women's movement; the three women were referred to as the "triumvirate".
Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist Kahlil Gibran was born #OTD in 1883.
He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran
Books by Kahlil Gibran at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1813
Jacob Bernoulli was born #OTD in 1655.
He was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus; along with his brother Johann, he was one of the founders of the calculus of variations. He also discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.
#OTD in 1904.
The first of Virginia Woolf's published writings, "Haworth, November 1904", an account of a visit to the Brontë family home, appears anonymously in a women's supplement to a clerical journal, The Guardian. (A book review written later has appeared in the same journal a week earlier.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haworth
Books by Virginia Woolf at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/89
"There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt."
Torvald Helmer, Act I
#OTD in 1879.
The first production of Henrik Ibsen's controversial "modern drama" A Doll's House takes place at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, after publication there on December 4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Doll%27s_House
A Doll's House at PG:
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2542
Albert Einstein passed away #OTD in 1955 due to complications from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm.
Doctors recommended surgical intervention but Einstein declined. He told them “I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly."
Here is his office just as he left it, before anyone came him to collect his things..
Image: R. Morse/LIFE
English author Agatha Christie died #OTD in 1976.
She is best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap.
Watch our podcast about The Big Four:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoKUX5a7T0Y&t=74s
Books by Agatha Chrissie at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/451
![Title page of Lost Sir Massingberd.
The book is in two volumes, with this being Volume I.
Published in London by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, located at 14, Ludgate Hill, in 1864.
It includes the note: "[The Right of Translation is Reserved.]".](/proxy/post_attachment/567629/107ffe112859b05dbfd4dc3369caae11.png "Title page of Lost Sir Massingberd.
The book is in two volumes, with this being Volume I.
Published in London by Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, located at 14, Ludgate Hill, in 1864.
It includes the note: \"[The Right of Translation is Reserved.]\".")
