JULY LITERARY BIRTHDAYS

(Complete list of July authors here.)

Featured Authors

William Makepeace Thackeray, Victorian novelist, July 18, 1811 - Dec. 24, 1863

Extensive overview of Thackery from The Victorian Web, including biographical materials, articles, drawings, bibliography, criticism, etc.; an 1865 review of Vanity Fair from The Atlantic Monthly; a facsimile copy of The Chronicle of the Drum.

Henry David Thoreau, American writer and Transcendentalist, July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau - very good site, with correspondence, handwriting, manuscripts, life and times, Thoreau FAQ, further reading, lots of related links, more; full texts of several of Thoreau's writings, including Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, and Walking. Also, a botanical index to Thoreau's journal.

Ernest [Miller] Hemingway, American novelist and short-story writer, July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961

Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois; his father, a doctor, took him on hunting and fishing trips in Michigan, the setting of Hemingway's first short stories. In World War I, he served first as an ambulance driver in Italy, then was seriously wounded while serving with the Italian army. In the early 1920s, he worked in Europe as a newspaper correspondent for the Toronto Star, where he met Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound in Paris; this time is chronicled in his memoir, A Moveable Feast (1964). Married four times, Hemingway ended his own life with a shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho.

Hemingway's first novel was The Torrents of Spring (1924), followed by The Sun Also Rises (1926), and two non-fiction works, Death in the Afternoon (1932) and The Green Hills of Africa (1935). During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway again worked as a news correspondent and from that experience wrote the play The Fifth Column (1938) and the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). He then lived in Key West, Florida, and finally settled in Cuba from 1939 to 1960, writing Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) and The Old Man and the Sea (1953), which won the 1953 Pulitzer prize; he also won the 1954 Nobel prize for literature. The novel Islands in the Stream (1970) was published after his death.

Two great sites: Virtual Hemingway , with over 350 Hemingway-related links organized into more than 20 categories, and Ernest Hemingway: His Life and Works. For a quick bio and more links, try the Nobel Prize Page on Hemingway.

Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner, 12 July 1904 - September 1973

Neruda, hosted by the Universidad de Chile (en Espanol), with timeline, bio, works, interviews, criticism, collections, and Neruda Foundation info; Neruda bio and bibliography from Kuusankoski Public Library (Finland), in English; Nobel Prize page on Neruda, with links to poems.

Other July Birthdays