Oct. 31: John Keats, English poet

BORN OCTOBER 31:

NAME (1795-1821) English poet whose ranking with Byron and Shelley is all the more amazing considering he published for only four years before dying of tuberculosis at age 25. Little acknowledged during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death. He wrote the "Six Great Odes" ("Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Indolence," "Ode on Melancholy," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to Psyche" and "To Autumn"); "The Eve of St. Agnes"; "La Belle Dame sans Merci"; "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"--where to stop?

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Oct. 30: Ezra Pound, American poet and critic

BORN OCTOBER 30:

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American expat poet and critic who encouraged and published such up-and-coming notables as T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was also arrested as a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II, but was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial. Instead he lived in mental wards for 13 years. Best noted for his daunting 800-page epic poem The Cantos.

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Oct. 29: James Boswell, Scottish biographer

BORN OCTOBER 29:

James Boswell (1740-1795) Scottish biographer and perhaps the world's most famous literary hanger-on. Boswell was a friend of London's 18th-century literary lion, the great Samuel Johnson, and capitalized on that friendship by writing what has been considered "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature," namely, The Life of Samuel Johnson. Boswell wrote other works as well, but so famous was his biography that dictionaries call "any devoted biographer of a specific person" by the term "a Boswell."

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Oct. 28: Evelyn Waugh, English writer

BORN OCTOBER 28:

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) English writer of novels, biographies and travel books who wrote the satires Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust; Brideshead Revisited, inspiration for the BBC mini-series; and the Sword of Honour trilogy based on Waugh's experiences during World War II. In later life he became something of a misanthrope, and was described as "the nastiest-tempered man in England"; others claim this was meant as an ironic pose.

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Oct. 27: Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and writer

BORN OCTOBER 27:

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Welsh poet and writer who wrote the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion"; and the prose works Under Milk Wood; A Child's Christmas in Wales; and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. He died at 39 of respiratory problems, perhaps complicated by his severe alcoholism; he had nurtured his image as a "roistering, drunken and doomed poet."

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Oct. 26: J. Frank Dobie, American folklorist

BORN OCTOBER 26:

J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964) American folklorist known for Coronado's Children. Someone called him "as Texan as a Longhorn steer"--apropos, as he once led a campaign to save that breed from extinction. As a professor and writer, he also "saved" a lot of old cowboys' stories of the Southwest from being lost (he said he "rob[bed the common people] of their stories"), and published over two dozen books. The one cited is one of my favorites: "treasure tales" of lost mines and Spanish hoards.

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Oct. 25: Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist

BORN OCTOBER 25:

Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, multi-faceted artist, poet, and playwright; work includes Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Guernica; Dove; Head of a Woman; and Bull's Head. He has become a byword for "the artist": "You're good, kid, but you're no Picasso."

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Oct. 24: William Penn, English Quaker

BORN OCTOBER 24:

William Penn English Quaker and philosopher; founder of "Penn's Woods" (Pennsylvania). Wrote Christian polemics like the epigrammatic Fruits of Solitude; and No Cross, No Crown, written during imprisonment in the Tower of London.

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Oct. 23: Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish monk

BORN OCTOBER 23:

Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) Spanish Roman Catholic theologian and founder of the Jesuits; wrote the Autobiography and Spiritual Exercises, which are still used today.

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Oct. 22: Ivan Bunin, Russian writer

BORN OCTOBER 22:

Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) Russian writer; wrote the novelette The Village (portraying country life through the story of two mismatched and unidealized peasant brothers); the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev; and the short-story collection Dark Avenues, among others; first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1933)

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Oct. 21: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet

BORN OCTOBER 21:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and philosopher known for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (which gave us the idiom "an albatross around one's neck") and Kubla Khan (the result of an opium-induced dream)

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Oct. 20: John Dewey, American educator

BORN OCTOBER 20:

John Dewey (1859-1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educator. His influence on American education is so vast--he published more than 700 articles in 140 journals, and wrote approximately 40 books, in addition to operating pragmatic "teaching lab" schools and teaching in universties--that it's hard today to separate out what is Dewey and what is not.

He wrote (among many those others) Democracy and Education; The Public and its Problems; Art as Experience; Freedom and Culture; and Knowing and the Known.

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Oct. 19: Leigh Hunt, English author

BORN OCTOBER 19:

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) English critic, essayist, and poet whose popular poems include "Jenny kiss'd Me," "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel," and "A Night-Rain in Summer."

He brought such greats as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson to the attention of the public. For this alone, he deserves our thanks, but many of his poems, though lacking sophistication, are delightful.

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Oct. 18: Liu E, Chinese novelist

BORN OCTOBER 18:

Liu E (1857-1909) Chinese novelist who wrote the social satire Lao Can Youji (The Travels of Lao Can).

In his younger days he worked in the government, and privately raised funds to purchase rice to feed the poor during difficult times.

Later he became an archaeologist, working especially with so-called "oracle bones" (carved ox bones and turtle shells superheated to create cracks thought to convey messages), publishing a work called The Repository of Turtles.

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Oct. 17: Alan Garner, English novelist

BORN OCTOBER 17:

Alan Garner (born 1934) English novelist well-known for "children's" fantasy novels (though very sophisticated, and based on local lore), including the Alderley trilogy: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen; The Moon of Gomrath; and, nearly 50 years after Moon, Boneland.

The Stone Book Quartet is also notable, and Garner has written several books retelling British folk tales.

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Oct. 16: Oscar Wilde, Irish author

BORN OCTOBER 16:

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. He wrote (among others) The Picture of Dorian Gray; The Importance of Being Earnest; and The Ballad of Reading Gaol; also, the very un-child-like fairy tales "The Happy Prince"; "The Nightingale and the Rose"; and "The Selfish Giant."

Wilde was not as clever as he thought: when the father of one of his lovers accused him (correctly) of homosexuality, Wilde sued him for criminal libel--and lost. Evidence brought forth in the trial led to Wilde's criminal conviction for "gross indecency," and he was jailed for two years.

He died in self-imposed exile, of meningitis, at age 46.

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Oct. 15: Virgil, Roman poet

BORN OCTOBER 15th:

Virgil (70 BCE-19 BCE) Roman poet known for The Aeneid, a sort of sequel to Homer's works on the Trojan War which ties the Greeks to the founding of Rome; The Eclogues, peopled by strangely political shepherds; and The Georgics, which he explores the themes of agriculture. Virgil's status as a poet led Dante to choose him as the narrator's guide through Hell and Purgatory in The Divine Comedy.

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Oct. 14: e. e. cummings, American poet

BORN OCTOBER 14th:

e. e. cummings (1894-1962) American poet known for odd capitalization, strange arrangement on the page, and untitled poems referred to by their first lines. "in Just-" (about Spring, "when the world is puddle-wonderful"), the (perhaps mock-) patriotic "next to of course god america I," and the sobering "Buffalo Bill's" are among his approximately 2,900 poems.

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Oct. 13: Kobayashi Takiji, Japanese novelist

BORN OCTOBER 13th:

Kobayashi Takiji (1903-1933) Japanese novelist who wrote The Crab Cannery Ship (Kanikosen), which tells of the hard life of cannery workers, fishermen, and seamen, and the beginning of their revolt against their employer. It was banned by government censors. A leftist author of "proletarian literature," he died of a heart attack while being tortured by the police. For fear of the authorities, no hospital would perform an autopsy.

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Oct. 12: Anatole France, French writer

DIED OCTOBER 12th:

Anatole France (1844-1924) French poet, journalist, and novelist, called "the ideal French man of letters." Works include Thaïs; Penguin Island; The Gods Are Athirst. His Nobel Prize in Literature (1921) mentioned not only his style but his "profound human sympathy." He worked across genres, including poetry and journalism, but was best known for his novels--and especially for satire.

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