MARCH LITERARY BIRTHDAYS
(Complete list of March authors here.)Featured Authors
Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright (20 March 1828 - 23 May 1906)
Ibsen, born in Skien, Norway, wrote his first plays in 1850: Catiline and The Burial Mound. From 1857 to 1864 he was artistic director of the new Norske Theatre, the Bergen Theatre, and the Christiania Theatre. He married Suzannah Thoresen in 1858 and they had one son. After 1864, Ibsen exiled himself from Norway, returning home intermittently, for 27 years, living in Rome, Munich, Dresden; these are the cities where he wrote most of his best-known works, among them Brand (1866), Peer Gynt (1867), Pillars of Society (1877), A Doll?s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), The Wild Duck (1884), and Hedda Gabler (1890). Ibsen suffered a stroke in 1900 that put an end to his writing, and when he died in 1903 he was accorded a state funeral in Norway. His reported last words were "To the contrary."
HTML texts of Peer Gynt, The Wild Duck, and A Doll's House are all available online. There's a long essay on Ibsen's life and writing, including thoughts on the psychology of Ibsen, written by a professor at the Univ. of Oslo; a chronology of Ibsen's life through Ibsen.net; a short bio of Ibsen through Finland's Kuusankoski Public Library; and a an Ibsen bibliography (in Norwegian), with plays, poems, and letters listed, again through the Centre for Ibsen Studies
.A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, English poet (26 March 1859 - 30 April 1936)
Housman was born in Worcestershire, England and worked in a patent office after failing final exams at college in 1881. He spent free time studying the classics and in 1892 became a professor of Latin. His first book of poems, A Shropshire Lad (1896) made him famous, but later books were not published for over 20 more years, including Last Poems (1922), More Poems (1936), and Collected Poems (1939). Housman's poetic influences were Shakespeare, Scottish ballads, and Heine. In addition to his poetry, Housman also published editions of Juvenal (1905), Lucan (1926), and Manilus (1903-31), which were widely respected. There is short bio of Housman and links to some poems through the Academy of American Poets Housman exhibit.
Housman's poems are available through the Univ. of Toronto, and the full e-text of A Shropshire Lad is also available online.
Robert P. Tristram Coffin, Maine poet and reporter (18 Mar 1892 - 1955)
Born in Brunswick, a 1915 graduate of Bowdoin, and later a professor there (1934-1955), essayist, poet, and novelist Coffin won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Strange Holiness. The Bowdoin Special Collections Library gives detailed information about the almost 50 linear feet of manuscripts, drafts, proofs, notes, personal records, lectures, plays, poems, books, recordings, and photographs that it holds.
Two biographical pages are found on the Bowdoin Special Collections page on Coffin and from the Milne Special Collections page on Coffin at the Univ. of New Hampshire.
Coffin's works include:
Poetry: Christchurch (1924), Dew & Bronze (1927), Golden Falcon (1929), The Yoke of Thunder (1932), Ballads of Square-Toed Americans (1933), Strange Holiness (1935; won Pulitzer), Fifteen Girls on a Hobby Horse (1937; collection of short stories and poems), Saltwater Farm (1937), Maine Ballads (1938), There Will Be Bread and Love (1942), Primer for America (1943), Poem for a Son with Wings (1945), Apples By Ocean (1945/1950), People Behave Like Ballads (1946), Collected Poems (1948), One-Horse Farm: Down East Georgics (1949), The Third Hunger and the Poem Aloud (1949), Poems That Write the Poet (1953; poetic text of a lecture at Haverford College, given 1898), Hellas Revisted (1954), Selected Poems (1955).
Essays: Book of Crowns and Cottages (1925), An Attic Room (1929), New Poetry of New England: Frost & Robinson (1938; lectures), The Substance That Is Poetry (1942), Book of Uncles (1944), Maine Doings: Informal Essays (1950), On the Green Carpet (1951), Mainstays of Maine (1944/1978; cookery), Maine Cooking: Old-Time Secrets (1991?, essays on food; maybe a republication of Mainstays?).
Novels: Red Sky in the Morning (1935), John Dawn (1936), and Thomas, Thomas -- Ancil Thomas (1941).
Biographies and other Non-Fiction: A Book of Seventeenth-Century Prose (1929; co-edited), Laud: Storm Center of Stuart England (1930), The Dukes of Buckingham (1931), Lost Paradise: A Boyhood on a Maine Coast Farm (1934; based on recollections of childhood spent on Pond Island), Portrait of an American (1935; about his father), Kennebec: Cradle of Americans (1937/1965), Captain Abby and Captain John (1939; about The Pennells of Brunswick), Yankee Coast (1947), Christmas in Maine (1948), Do You Know Maine? (1948), Coast Calendar (1949), Life in America: New England (1951).
[Victoria Mary] Vita Sackville-West, British novelist and poet (9 March 1892 - 2 June 1962 )
Sackville-West was born in Kent, England, a place she always loved and returned to. She led an unusual life, married in 1913 to Harold Nicholson, a diplomat and politician. Their marriage was purportedly a happy one, although each was bisexual and had affairs outside the marriage, Vita's most notably with Violet Keppel Trefusis and Virginia Woolf. The couple had two sons, Benedict and Nigel; Nigel Nicholson wrote a book (Portrait of a Marriage) about his parent's unorthodox marriage in 1973.
Sackville-West was a prolific writer, beginning as a teenager and publishing her first book, Chatterton, a verse drama, when she was 17. She published about 50 books in all, including non-fiction, novels, and poetry. She won the Hawthornden Prize for her long poem "The Land" in 1927. Sackville-West also wrote a weekly gardening column for the Observer newspaper for years.
The Vita Sackville-West page at the University of Southern California-Fullerton Library offers a short background and a lengthy bibliography. More biography is available through Finland's Kuusankoski Public Library. The Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia features a painting of Sackville-West. In 1913, the Nicholsons bought Sissinghurst Castle and with Vita as plantsman and Harold as designer, they created a garden that is still one of the most important and well-known in the world.
[Jean Louis] Jack Kerouac, American beat writer (12 March 1922 - 21 October 1969)
Born in Lowell, Mass. (other birthdates listed as 3/11 and 3/13), Kerouac published his first novel in 1950, titled The Town and the City. He was strongly influenced in his writing by the beat generation writers Burroughs and Ginsberg. His best-known work, On the Road (1957) was inspired by cross-country trips taken while under the influence of drugs/drink, as Kerouac was purported to be for most of his life. His novel The Dharma Bums (1958), which describes a mountain climbing trip he and poet Gary Snyder took in Yosemite, contributed to popularising Zen Buddhism as a philosophy for bohemian artists in the U.S. In all, Kerouac published over 20 books. He died of an abdominal hemorrhage while living in St. Petersburg, Fla. with his mother and his third wife, Stella Sampas.
The Literary Kicks site for Kerouac has a long and interesting biography, bibliographies, and a photo. There's a one-page Kerouac bio available through Finland's Kuusankoski Public Library.
Other March Birthdays:
- Mar 1
- U.S. novelist, editor, and critic (born in Ohio) William Dean Howells (1837; d.1920), who served as editor of Atlantic Monthly from 1871-1881, and whose novels The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), A Modern Instance (1882), and others are ralistic potrayals of American manners
- British biographer, critic, and Bloomsbury Group member [Giles] Lytton Strachey (1880; d.1932)
- Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892; d.1927)
- Oklahoman native, African-American novelist, essayist, and short story writer Ralph [Waldo] Ellison (1914; d.1994; The Invisible Man)
- U.S. poet and pacifist Robert Lowell Jr. (1917; d.1977)
- 2nd U.S. poet laureate Richard Wilbur (1921)
- Mar 2
- Yiddish story teller Shalom Aleichem (1859; d.1916)
- NYC-born writer John Jay Chapman (1862; d.1933), whose best-known work is Emerson and Other Essays (1898)
- Dr. Seuss alter-ego Theodor Geisel (1904; d.1991)
- journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe (1931)
- writer John Irving (1942), born Exeter, N.H.
- Mar 3
- English dramatist and poet Thomas Otway (1652; d.1685; Otway's poem, 'The Enchantment')
- English philosopher and writer William Godwin (1756; d.1836), who was the consort of Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) and whose works expressed a strongly rationalistic, libertarian philosophy
- English writer and poet Edward Thomas (1878; d.1917)
- Yury Karlovich Olesha (1899; d.1960), Ukrainian writer, journalist, playwright
- poet James Merrill (1926; d.1995), who won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize
- Wyoming-born children's writer Patricia MacLachlan (1938; Sarah Plain and Tall; Q & A)
- Mar 4
- Swiss folklorist and writer Johann David Wyss (1743; d.1818; Swiss Family Robinson)
- British writer and poet Alan Sillitoe (1928; d.2010), who wrote The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1975)
- Ukrainian poet and political dissident Irina G. Ratushinskaya (1954)
- Mar 5
- New Hampshire writer Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840; d.1894)
- Chicago-born naturalist writer Frank Norris (1870; d.1902)
- Philadelphia native, African American playwright Charles H[enry] Fuller, Jr. (1939), who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1982 for A Soldier's Play (made into a film, A Soldier's Story, in 1984)
- Mar 6
- French dramatist, satirist, and soldier Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (1619; d.1655)
- British poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806; d.1861)
- Ring[gold Wilmer] Lardner, Sr. (1885; d.1933), Michigan-born satirical writer of the Jazz Age, author of Gullible's Travels, Etc. (1917) and You Know Me, Al (1916)
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928), Colombian novelist and 1982 Nobelist
- Mar 7
- German lyric poet Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715; d.1759)
- Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni (1785; d.1873)
- Japanese playwright Abe Kobo (1924; d.1993)
- Jewish South African-born novelist and short-story writer Dan Jacobson (1929)
- U.S. postmodernist writer Donald Barthelme (1931; d.1989)
- French writer George Perec (1936; d.1982)
- Mar 8
- Scottish essayist and children's story writer Kenneth Grahame (1859; d.1932), who wrote the children's classic The Wind in the Willows (1908)
- Colorado-born journalist, novelist, and biographer [Eu]Gene Fowler (1890; d.1960)
- Eric Linklater (1899; d.1974), Welsh-born Scottish novelist, poet and history writer
- New Jersey-born writer John McPhee (1931), winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize
- Mar 9
-
Besides Vita Sackville-West (above),
- English poet Edmund Waller (1606; d.1687);
- English writer, reformer, and publisher William Cobbett (1763; d.1835) aka Peter Porcupine, who wrote political pamphlets and gazettes with strong radical viewpoints in both America and England
- Ukranian national poet and painter Taras Shevchenko (1814; d.1861)
- David Garnett (1892), English novelist and editor
- Byron scholar Peter Quennell (1905)
- U.S. detective novelist and Mike Hammer creator Mickey [Frank Morrison] Spillane (1918; d.2006)
- Mar 10
- German Romantic writer and critic [Karl Wilhelm] Friedrich von Schlegel (1772; d.1829)
- Joseph Karl Benedikt, Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788; d.1857), German poet, novella writer, and autobiographer, whose folksong-style poetic lyrics were set to music by Schumann, Brahms, and others
- Spanish writer Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (1833; d.1891)
- U.S. poet, librarian, and the first California poet laureate Ina Donna Coolbrith (1842; d.1928) born Josephine Donna Smith
- German novelist Jakob Wasserman (1873)
- NYC columnist Paul Coates (1921)
- Iowa-born playwright and novelist David Rabe (1940)
- Mar 11
- Italian Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso (1544; d.1595; epic poem 'Jerusalem Delivered')
- Dutch Renaissance poet Henric Spieghel (1549; d.1612; birthdate also listed as March 3)
- British poet and novelist D[ennis] J[oseph] Enright (1920-2003)
- British sci-fi satirist Douglas Adams (1952; d.2001; Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
- Mar 12
Besides Jack Kerouac (above),
- English biographer and antiquary John Aubrey (1626; d.1697), the first person to propose that Stonehenge was a temple built by the Druids
- Italian novelist and soldier Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863; d.1938)
- English poet and animal lover Ralph Hodgson (1871; d.1962), considered one of the purest lyricists of his time
- Rui Ribeiro Couto (1898), Brazilian poet and short story writer
- Australian novelist, short story writer, literary critic Kylie Tennant (1912; d.1988)
- playwright Edward Albee (1928)
- John Gross (1935), author of books on other authors, literary collection editor
- prolific Ohio-raised African American children's author and novelist Virginia Hamilton (1936; d.2002), whose M.C. Higgins, the Great (1971) won the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award
- Mar 13
- American journalist Oswald Garrison Villard (1872; d.1949)
- Sir Hugh Walpole, New Zealand novelist, critic, and dramatist (1884; d.1941)
- Bostonian Janet Flanner (aka Genet), Paris columnist for the New Yorker (1892; d.1978)
- L. Ron Hubbard, Church of Scientology founder and sci-fi writer (1911; d.1986)
- Canadian writer W[illiam] O[rmond] Mitchell (1914; d.1998)
- Mar 14
- U.S. librarian, author, and bibliographer Isadore Gilbert Mudge (1875)
- Michigan-born children's writer Marguerite de Angeli (1889; d.1987)
- Hollywood screenwriter and novelist Max Shulman (1919)
- travel book writer Colin Fletcher (1922)
- John [Barrington] Wain, English novelist and poet (1925; d.1994)
- French novelist and director Bertrand Blier (1939)
- Mar 15
- Paul von Heyse (1830; d.1914), German writer and 1910 Nobelist
- Irish playwright, translator, and poet (and Yeats' patron) Lady Augusta Gregory (1852; d.1932), born Isabella Augusta Persse, co-founder and co-director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre
- English Roman Catholic poet and critic Lionel Pigot Johnson (1867; d.1902)
- American literary scholar of Irish literature, biographer, critic and writer Richard Ellman (1918; d.1987)
- Mar 16
- Dutch poet and playwright Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero (1585; d.1618)
- French novelist Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette (1634; d.1693), whose masterpiece was the novel La Princesse de Cleves (1678) and whose salons were frequented by Moliere, Boileau, and other important literary figures of the time
- French poet and the first Literature Nobelist (in 1901) Sully Prudhomme (1839; d.1907) aka Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme
- NY poet and playwright Percy MacKaye (1875; d.1956), best known for his pageant The Canterbury Pilgrims (1903)
- Cesar Vallejo, Peruvian poet (1892; d.1938; site in Spanish)
- NYC-born children's writer Sid Fleischman (1920)
- Mar 17
- German novelist and dramatist Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow (1811; d.1878)
- English author and illustrator Kate Greenaway (1846; d.1901)
- North Carolina-raised novelist and playwright Paul Green (1894; d.1981)
- Mar 18
Besides Robert PT Coffin (above),
- French symbolist poet and Edgar Allen Poe translator Stephane Mallarme (1842; d.1898)
- English WW I poet Wilfred Owen (1893; d.1918)
- Pennsylvania-born novelist and poet John Updike (1932; the 'Rabbit' series)
- Brooklyn native, African American poet and the first poet laureate of Rhode Island, Michael S. Harper (1938)
- Mar 19
- Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821; d.1890), English explorer, translator, travel book writer, one of the first Englishmen to explore Arabia and reach Mecca
- South African novelist and autobiographer Peter [Henry] Abrahams (1919; some sources say born March 3), a key figure in South Africa's literary heritage
- New Jersey-born novelist Philip Roth (1933)
- Mar 20
Besides Ibsen (above),
- the Roman poet and writer Ovid (43 B.C.; d.17 A.D.)
- German schizophrenic lyric poet [Johann Christian] Friedrich Hölderlin (1770; d.1843)
- Nova Scotian novelist and essayist Hugh MacLennan (1907; d.1990)
- children's author Lois Lowry (1937)
- NYC-born author of books for children and young adults Ellen Conford (1942)
- Mar 21
- Oregon-born poet and children's author Phyllis McGinley (1905; d.1978)
- Mar 22
- English illustrator and medal namesake Randolph Caldecott (1846; d.1886)
- North Dakotan writer of westerns Louis L'Amour (1908; d.1988)
- English novelist Nicholas Monsarrat (1910; The Cruel Sea, 1953)
- French-Canadian novelist Gabrielle Roy (1909; d.1983)
- Kentucky native, essayist and literary critic Houston A. Baker, Jr. (1943), whose focus is defining the African American literary tradition
- Mar 23
- French novelist, dramatist, and 1937 Nobelist Roger Martin du Guard (1881; d.1958)
- female Ghanaian dramatist and short story writer [Christina] Ama Ata Aidoo (1942)
- Mar 24
- English poet, artist, designer and true Renaissance man William Morris (1834; d.1896)
- English writer Malcolm Muggeridge (1903)
- beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919)
- Italian playwright, actor, and director Dario Fo (1926; Nobel in Literature 1997)
- Mar 25
- Transylvania-born (emigrated to U.S. at age 3) author of Broadway plays and musicals (including Kiss Me, Kate), novels, short stories, and articles Bella Cohen Spewack (1899; d.1990), whose writing partner was her husband Samuel (born Ukraine, Sept. 16, 1899)
- Georgian novelist [Mary] Flannery O'Connor (1925; d.1964)
- NYC-born African-American fiction writer, scriptwriter, and essayist Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (1959; d.1995)
- Mar 26
Besides Housman (above),
- Louise Otto (1819; d.1895; site in German, with poems and biography), aka Louise Otto-Peters, German author and feminist
- Massachusetts-born author Edward Bellamy (1850; d.1897)
- New England poet and school teacher (San Francisco-born) Robert [Lee] Frost (1874; d.1963), who variously wrote sonnets, lyrics, and philosophical poems, and who was much in demand as a speaker
- American writer on mythology and comparative religion Joseph Campbell (1906; d.1987)
- Mississippi-born playwright [Thomas Lanier] Tennesee Williams (1911; d.1983)
- British novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923)
- beat poet Gregory Corso (1930; d.2001)
- NYC novelist Erica Jong (1942)
- Mar 27
- German novelist and essayist Heinrich Mann (1871; d. 1950; brother of Thomas Mann)
- NYC-born (raised Hollywood) novelist and screenwriter/scriptwriter Budd Schulberg (1914), well-known for his screenplay for On the Waterfront (1954), which won eight Academy Awards
- Mar 28
- William Byrd II (1674; d.1744), colonial Virginia writer
- Maxim Gorki (1868; born March 16 in old style calendar; d.1936) born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, Russian dramatist and novelist, one of the first Russian writers to express the view of the worker
- Michigan-born novelist Nelson Algren [Abraham] (1909; d.1981)
- Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal (1924; d.1997)
- Mario Vargas Llosa (1936; site in Spanish), born Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, Peruvian novelist and politician
- Mar 29
- Deszo Kosztolanyi, Hungarian poet and prose writer (1885; d.1936)
- NY-born playwright, producer, and actor Howard Lindsay (1889)
- German novelist and essayist Ernst Junger (1895; d.1998)
- NYC-born novelist and magazine editor Helen Yglesias (1915; d.2008)
- Mar 30
- English writer Anna Sewell (1820; d.1878), author of Black Beauty
- French lyric poet Paul Verlaine (1844; d.1896)
- Polish (Hungary-born) actress, novelist, and playwright of the Naturalist school, Gabriela Zapolska (1857; d.1921), born Maria Gabriela Korwin-Piotrowska
- Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (1880; d.1964)
- Mar 31
- English metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell (1621; d.1678)
- English writer, and translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859), Edward FitzGerald (1809; d.1883)
- Ukraine-born Russian realist writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809; d.1852), who penned the satirical masterpiece, Dead Souls (1842)
- Scottish author Andrew Lang (1844; d.1912)
- Mexican writer and diplomat Octavio Paz (1914; d.1998; site in Spanish and English)
- English novelist John Fowles (1926; d.2005)
- U.S. writer from the Bronx, Judith Rossner (1935; d.2005), who wrote Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1975)
- U.S. novelist Marge Piercy (1936)
- Chicago author John Jakes (1932)