AUGUST LITERARY BIRTHDAYS
(Complete list of August authors here.)Featured Authors
H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, U.S. Gothic (or supernatural) novelist, Aug. 20, 1890 - Mar. 15, 1937
HP Lovecraft was born in Providence, RI, and is known primarily as a writer of weird fantasy and horror fiction and a prodigious correspondent. The HP Lovecraft Archive has info on Lovecraft's life, writings, creations (fictional elements including Lovecraftian locations in New England, a bestiary, and a list of grimoires), study (biographies, literary criticism, bibliographies, periodicals, and online articles), Lovecraft in popular culture (movies, games, music, and art based on Lovecraft's works), and links to related sites. Alan Guillette's Lovecraft page also has a very good biography, links, texts online, and bibliography, and the Scriptorium's biography of Lovecraft, written by S.T. Joshi, is extensive. Here's a description of Lovecraft's writing.
Dorothy Parker, American short story writer/poet/critic and wit, Aug. 22, 1893 - 1967
Known for her biting turn of phrase, Parker left behind lots of quotes, some of which are available at the Working Humor website. The Dorothy Parker Society of New York provides photographs of homes and apartments where Parker and the Algonquin Round Table folks spent their leisure, offers an audio clip of Parker reading her 30 poems, and links to interviews, articles, an obituary, and other information. AmericanPoems.com has a longish page of biography and links to texts of 100 of her poems.
Conrad Aiken, American poet (Pulitzer 1930), Aug. 5, 1899 - 1973
The Academy of American Poets offers a section on Aiken, with biography, bibliography, texts of five poems, and links to related sites. A short bio, six poems, and a critical essay on Aiken are offered through Ian Kluge's Aiken Page; poetry, biography, bibliography, and Conrad Aiken Studies Journal available through the Studies Journal page; and a description of Aiken's papers at Washington University. The New Georgia Encyclopedia also provides some biography and a suggested reading list.
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine fiction writer and essayist, Aug. 24, 1899 - June 14, 1986
The Jorge Luis Borges Center, in English, Spanish, and French; biography, list of works, quotes, influences, and criticism are available through the Garden of the Forking Path; a discussion of Borges' writing also makes interesting reading.
Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian poet/critic/translator and winner of Nobel Prize 1959, Aug. 20, 1901 - 1968
Biography and works list for Quasimodo (in English), provided by Finland's Kuusankoski Public Library; Official Quasimodo Page, in Italian, with biography; interesting page on Italian literature, in which Quasimodo poems are mentioned.
Ray Bradbury, U.S. Science Fiction Writer, Aug. 22, 1920 -
Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois and has become known as one of the leading American writers of science-fiction novels and short stories. Ray Bradbury Online offers biography, bibliography (Books, Film/TV, Audio, and Critical Works), images, quotes, and features on the books The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. Paul Brians offers an excellent study guide for The Martian Chronicles. A 1991 Bradbury interview transcript is also available on-line.
Other August Birthdays
- Aug 1
- U.S. writer of Two Years Before the Mast Richard Henry Dana (1815;d.1882)
- American writer Herman Melville (1819; Melville's works)
- French-Canadian novelist, poet, playwright, and short-story writer Anne Hébert (1916;), noted for her examination of the Québécois
- London-born Australian paperback writer Carter Brown (1923) aka Allan Geoffrey Yates and Caroline Farr, who wrote 150 crime stories, all set in the U.S
- poet Walter Griffin (1937), born in Delaware
- Brooklyn-born poet Hugh Seidman (1940; a poem by Seidman)
- Cleveland native, now living in Canada, novelist and journalist Amy Friedman (1952), author of Kick the Dog and Shoot the Cat and others
- Nashville native and novelist and short-story writer Madison Smartt Bell (1957)
- Aug 2
- Ernest [Christopher] Dowson (1867; d.1900), English poet, influenced by Latin erotic poetry and French aesthetes
- Ohio-born critic, teacher, leader of the New Humanism movement, Irving Babbitt (1869); Venezuelan novelist and president Romulo Gallegos (1884;d.1969)
- John Kieran (1892), columnist and author of a natural history of NYC
- Harlem-born novelist, playwright, and essayist James [Arthur] Baldwin (1924), whose first novel was Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953)
- Minneapolis-born poet, Bennington College professor, Stephen Sandy (1934)
- U.S. writer of thrillers and westerns Mitchell Smith (1935)
- Peruvian writer Isabel Allende (1942)
- Miami-born novelist Beverly Coyle (1946)
- Beijing-born poet (now living in exile in the U.S.) Bei Dao (1949), aka Zhao Zhengkai, one of the few Chinese writers to have an international audience
- Aug 3
- English WWI poet Rupert Brooke (1887; d.1915); Indiana-born war correspondent Ernie Pyle (1900)
- British mystery writer and Conservative life peer in the House of Lords P[hyllis] D[orothy] James (1920)
- Connecticut-born poet, critic, and novelist Hayden Carruth (1921)
- U.S. novelist, born Baltimore, Leon Uris (1924; Exodus, QBVII)
- romance novelist Annette Sanford (1929), born in Texas, whose pen names include Mary Carroll, Meg Dominique, Lisa St. John, and others
- NYC-born poet (Iowa Poet Laureate) Marvin Bell (1937)
- poet Diane Wakoski (1937), born in Whittier, California
- Ohio native, writer and literary reviewer Walter Kirn (1962)
- Aug 4
- Romantic English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792)
- English naturalist and novelist (born Argentina of American parents) William Henry Hudson (1841; d.1922), best known for Green Mansions (1904), a romantic novel set in Venezuela
- Norwegian author and 1920 Nobel literature prize winner Knut Hamsun (1859; d.1952), born Knut Pedersen, best known for realistic rural novel Growth of the Soil (1917)
- Detroit poet Robert Hayden (1913; d.1980), born Asa Bundy Sheffey
- Algerian (now lives U.S.) novelist, translator, poet, playwright, short-story writer, and filmmaker, Assia Djebar (1936) aka Fatima-Zohra Imalayen
- Aug 5
-
Besides Aiken,
- French short story writer Guy de Maupassant (1850; short stories)
- Swedish writer and journalist Per Wahlöö (1926), who with his wife Maj Sjöwall created the detective character Martin Beck
- Kentucky-born rural conservationist and poet Wendell Berry (1934)
- Aug 6
- French writer Francois Fenelon (1651)
- English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809; selected works of Tennyson)
- French poet, playwright, essayist, and diplomat Paul [Louis Charles Marie] Claudel (1868; d.1955), whose conversion to Catholicism in 1890 became an important element in his writing
- Scott Nearing (1883), pacifist and author of many books on economics
- children's author Norma Farber (1909), born in Boston, best known for As I Was Crossing the Boston Common, a 1976 National Book Award winner
- Pennsylvania native, science columnist, and children's sci-fi writer Janet Asimov (1926)
- British-born, American sci-fi/fantasy writer Piers Anthony (1934), author of the Xanth series
- Aug 7
- The Father of Swedish poetry Georg Stiernhielm (1598; site referenced is in Swedish)
- Laurence Eigner (1927), prolific Massachusetts-born poet and short story writer
- Garrison Keillor (1942), humorist and host of ' A Prairie Home Companion'
- Washington, D.C. born novelist and short story writer Ann Beattie (1947)
- Aug 8
- U.S. poet Sara Teasdale (1884; four Teasdale poems
- U.S. writer, author of The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896)
- South Carolinian comic novelist Valerie Sayers (1952; excerpt from Brain Fever)
- Washington, D.C. native and short-story writer/novelist Elizabeth Ann Tallent (1954)
- Aug 9
- Compleat Angler writer Izaak Walton (1593)
- England's first poet laureate, John Dryden (1631; d.1700; selected Dryden poems), also dramatist and man of letters
- English writer Philip Larkin (1922)
- NYC-born mystery writer and creator of Dr. Alex Delaware, Jonathan Kellerman (1949)
- novelist Jeanne Larsen (1950), born Washington, D.C., whose novels take place in historical China
- Aug 10
- Austrian poet and playwright Lawrence Binyon (1869)
- Brooklyn-born poet, playwright, and translator Witter Bynner (1881)
- Brazilian writer Jorge Amado (1912-2001; page on Amado in Spanish)
- Aug 11
- English writer Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823)
- Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid [born Christopher Murray Grieve] (1892)
- Maine writer and poet Louise Bogan (1897)
- prolific British children's writer Enid Blyton (1897; d.1968)
- English writer Sir Angus Wilson (1913)
- New York-born biographer, scriptwriter, and novelist (Roots) Alex [Murray Palmer] Haley (1921)
- Tennessee-raised African American journalist, public affairs commentator, and biographer Carl [Thomas] Rowan (1925)
- Louisiana-born short story writer Andre Dubus (1936)
- Aug 12
- English poet and biographer Robert Southey (1774; selected Southey poetry)
- the author of America the Beautiful, Katharine Lee Bates (1859)
- Spanish dramatist and 1922 Nobel prize winner Jacinto Benavente y Martinez (1866)
- U.S. mythology writer Edith Hamilton (1867)
- U.S. mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876), author of The Circular Staircase
- English novelist and literary critic Frank Swinnerton (1884)
- Zerna Sharp (1889), born in Indiana and the creator of the Dick and Jane readers for children
- Brooklyn-born satirical novelist Wallace Markfield (1926; d.23/May/2002)
- Chicago native, novelist and screenwriter William Goldman (1931), who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- West Virginia native (raised Harlem), African American young adult novelist and picture book writer Walter Dean Myers (1937), who received a Newbery Honor Award for his book Scorpions (1988)
- NYC-born writer Gail Parent (1940), author of Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York (1972) and a comedy writer for 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'
- Pennsylvania-born poet and essayist J.D. McClatchy (1945)
- Aug 13
- Hungarian/German/Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802; d.1850) born Nikolaus Niembsch von Strehlenau
- Aug 14
- English poet and novelist Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802)
- author and naturalist Ernest T. Seton (1860)
- English novelist, playwright, and 1932 Nobel prize winner John Galsworthy (1867; d.1933), who wrote The Forsyte Saga (1906-1922), made into a BBC film in 1968
- two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Russell Baker (1925), born in Virginia, editorial writer for the New York Times, and author of the memoir Growing Up
- westerns writer William Kittredge (1932), born in Portland, Oregon
- Georgia-born poet Alfred Corn (1943)
- Aug 15
- Italian poet Luigi Pulci (1432)
- Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771; Scott's poems)
- English writer Thomas De Quincey (1785; d.1859) whose Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822) is his most popular work
- Michigan writer Edna Ferber (1887)
- Welsh soldier and writer, 'Lawrence of Arabia,' T[homas] E[dward] Lawrence (1888; d. 1935)
- novelist and librarian Louise Shivers (1929), born in North Carolina
- Australian/American writer Garry Disher (1949), best known for his children's book, The Bamboo Flute
- Michigan-born poet Mary Jo Salter (1954)
- Swedish journalist and crime novelist (Millennium series) Stieg Larsson (1954; d.2004)
- Aug 16
- French symbolist poet and short story writer (born Montevideo, Uruguay) Jules Laforgue (1860; d.1887 of tuberculosis; Laforgue's poem 'La Cigarette' in French)
- sci-fi writer Hugo Gernsback (1884)
- British Regency novelist Georgette Heyer (1902)
- Harlem Renaissance writer (born Salt Lake City, Utah) Wallace Thurman (1902)
- Illinois-born novelist, short story writer, and editor at The New Yorker, William Maxwell (1908)
- prolific children's author Beatrice Schenk de Regniers (1914), born in Indiana and winner of the 1965 Caldecott Award
- German-born American poet Charles Bukowski (1920)
- Aug 17
- Philadelphia-born African-American diarist, poet, and essayist Charlotte Lottie Forten (1837/1838?; d.1914) aka Miss C.L.F., best known for her posthumously published The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten: A Free Negro in the Slave Era (1953)
- English writer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840; a few of Blunt's poems)
- Jamaican essayist, editor, journalist, and poet Marcus [Moziah] Garvey [Jr.] (1887; d.1940), who founded the back-to-Africa movement among African and West Indian Americans
- Connecticut-born poet, playwright, and writer of avant garde novels, John Hawkes (1925)
- English poet laureate [Edward James] Ted Hughes (1930)
- Trinidad-born British novelist and essayist V[idiadhar] S[urajprasad] Naipaul (1932), who won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature
- Aug 18
- Italian history writer Elsa Morante (1916)
- French novelist, film writer, and film director Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922; Robbe-Grillet's bibliography)
- Berlin-born American children's author Sonia Levitin (1934)
- Washington, D.C. native and children's author (The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, the Amber Brown books, others), Paula Danziger (1944)
- Aug 19
- English novelist Samuel Richardson (1689)
- Charles Montagu Doughty (1843; d.1926), traveler and English writer in the Elizabethan style, whose observations on Arabia and Arab life are the subject of his Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888)
- Finnish novelist and dramatist Minna Canth (1844)
- British children's writer Edith Nesbit (1858)
- American light verse writer Ogden Nash (1902; 32 of Nash's poems)
- novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner James Gould Cozzens (1903)
- Canadian writer Josephine Jacobsen (1908)
- American screenwriter, publicist, and journalist Ring Lardner, Jr. (1915; d.2000), son of well-known humorist Ring W. Lardner, Sr.
- Aug 20
-
Besides Lovecraft and Quasimodo,
- poet and newsman from Michigan (born Birmingham, England) Edgar A. Guest (1881; several of Guest's poems)
- popular novelist Jacqueline Susann (1921; d.1974), who wrote the immensely popular Valley of the Dolls
- Arizona-born children's author Sue Alexander (1933)
- Mexican-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer Lionel G. Garcia (1935)
- California native and poet Heather McHugh (1948)
- New Jersey-born novelist Kevin Baker (1958)
- Irish novelist Deidre Madden (1960), whose first book, Hidden Symptoms won Ireland's literary award, the Rooney Prize
- Aug 21
- New Jersey native and poet X.J. Kennedy (1929), aka Joseph Charles Kennedy
- Russian (born Chuvash) poet Gennady Nikolaevich Aygi (1934; d. 2006)
- Mississippi-born playwright Mart Crowley (1935), best known for his play Boys in the Band
- Brooklyn native Robert Stone (1937), whose novel Dog Soldiers (1974) won the National Book Award
- Aug 22
-
Besides Parker and Bradbury,
- Connecticut-born novelist, short story writer, and how-to writer E. Annie Proulx (1935)
- Dublin-born novelist Colm Tóibín (1955)
- Aug 23
- English poet, critic, and editor William Ernest Henley (1849; d.1903), famous for the poem 'Invictus' (in Book of Verses, 1888)
- Kansan poet, playwright and novelist Edgar Lee Masters (1869), author of Spoon River Anthology
- Maryland poet J.V. Cunningham (1911)
- essayist and poet, Chicago-born Wisconsinite Norbert Blei (1935)
- British novelist Robert Irwin (1946), author of the comic novel, The Limits of Vision (1986), in which a London housewife holds imaginary conversations with Da Vinci, Dickens, and Darwin, on the subject of dust balls and dirt [description taken from A Writer's Almanac, 1999]
- English playwright Willy Russell (1947), who wrote Shirley Valentine and Educating Rita, among others
- novelist and short story writer from Montana, Melanie Rae Thon (1957)
- Aug 24
-
Besides Borges,
- English poet Robert Herrick (baptised on this date, 1591; d.1674); more of Herrick's poems)
- English essayist, novelist, caricaturist, critic, and wit Sir Max Beerbohm (1872; d.1956), born London of Lithuanian parents
- West Indian writer Jean Rhys aka Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams (1890)
- U.S. literary critic, historian, editor, poet and essayist Malcolm Cowley (1898)
- British novelist A.S. Byatt born Antonia Susan Drabble (1936; another good Byatt site until her official one is completely up and running), who won Britain's Booker Prize in 1991
- U.S. poet, scriptwriter, and Smothers Brothers show comedy writer (and the composer of 'Classical Gas') Mason Williams (1938)
- Aug 25
- New York-born journalist, editor and poet Bret Harte (1839; d.1902), born Francis Brett Hart, whose tales and ballads are noted for their humour and Western color
- Irish novelist Brian Moore (1921)
- Tennessee-born poet Charles Wright (1935), who won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection Black Zodiac
- poet and children's author Charles Ghigna aka Father Goose (1946)
- Aug 26
- Scottish writer Sir John Buchan (1875)
- French poet and movie critic (born in Rome) Guillaume Apollinaire (1880; site referenced is in French)
- creator of Charlie Chan, Ohio-born Earl Biggers (1884)
- French novelist/dramatist/poet Jules Romains (1885)
- English novelist and playwright Christopher Isherwood (1904)
- Argentine novelist and poet, born Brussels, Julio Cortázar (1914; web site in Spanish)
- prolific Canadian novelist, short-story writer, and poet Elizabeth Brewster (1922), born in New Brunswick
- Montana-born political journalist, essayist, historian Barbara Ehrenreich (1941)
- Aug 27
- Chinese philosopher and writer (born in Lu) Confucius (551 BC) aka K'ung-fu-tzu, who wrote the Analects (Lun Yu) and other Chinese classics
- American novelist and newspaper writer (born Indiana) Theodore Dreiser (1871; d.1945), who wrote Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), considered his finest novel
- Horatio Hornblower creator C.S. Forester (1899)
- novelist Ira Levin (1929)
- mystery writer, historian, and biographer Antonia Fraser (1932)
- William Least Heat Moon (1939) born in Kansas City as William Lewis Trogdon, author of Blue Highways and other books about place
- Aug 28
- German dramatist, poet, and novelist, and author of 'Faust,' (1770 and 1831) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749; d.1832)
- Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828 O.S., 9 Nov. N.S.; d.1910), wrote War and Peace, Anna Karenina, others
- U.S. sociologist and writer Bruno Bettelheim (1903; d.1990)
- British poet Sir John Betjeman (1906)
- New Zealand novelist Janet Frame(1924)
- Ohio native and poet Rita Dove (1952), winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize
- Aug 29
- Massachusetts physician, essayist, poet, and novelist Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809; d.1894), whose poem 'Old Ironsides' (1830) is responsible for saving the historic ship Constitution, and who co-founded the Atlantic Monthly magazine
- Maryland-born writer, propagandist, and author of Lincoln's 'War Powers of the President' Anna Ella Carroll (1815)
- Belgian poet and Nobel Prize winner Count Maurice Maeterlinck (1862)
- French novelist and translator Valery Nicolas Larbaud (1881)
- Chicago-born screenwriter, director and playwright Preston Sturges (1898)
- English poet Thom Gunn (1929)
- Michigan-born novelist Sue Harrison (1950), who's written a Native American trilogy
- Aug 30
- English writer and Frankenstein creator Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797)
- British biographer Elizabeth Longford (1906)
- Aug 31
- French romantic poet, novelist, critic, and travel book writer [Pierre Jules] Théophile Gautier (1811; d.1872)
- Novelist and author of Porgy, on which 'Porgy and Bess' was based, DuBose Heyward (1885)
- William Shawn (1907), born in Chicago and one of the great editors of the The New Yorker (1952-1987)
- U.S. novelist and playwright William Saroyan (1908)