Tag Archive for ‘Don’t Know Much About Literature’
“A lover’s quarrel with the world”-Robert Frost
In honor of his birthday on March 26, 1874, a video tribute to Robert Frost.
Don’t Know Much About® Edith Wharton
Born today in New York City in 1862: Edith Newbold Jones, who achieved fame as Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
Don’t Know Much About Melville
Born August 1, 1819 in New York City, Herman Melville. In New York’s West Village, where I live, the streets are filled with literary “ghosts” –reminders of the great writers who lived and worked in this historic district of New York. Every day that I walk around the neighborhood, is like getting a literary education. [Read More]
Don’t Know Much About® Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Born in Concord, Mass. on July 12, 1817, Henry David Thoreau was [Read More]
Don’t Know Much About® Walt Whitman
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear. Born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, New York, Walt Whitman changed the way we thought about poetry. He “heard America singing.” And his work has inspired some, bedeviled others (mostly students) and stood as the work of a unique American voice for more [Read More]
“By the Rude Bridge…”
“Listen my children, and you shall hear/of the midnight ride of . . . Joseph Warren?” Okay, that doesn’t scan quite like Longfellow’s original “Paul Revere’s Ride.” But that’s the problem. In making sure we “hear” about “Revere,” Longfellow –an abolitionist who wrote that poem in 1861 as a call to rally the Union as [Read More]
Don’t Know Much About® America’s Most Important Book?
On March 20, 1852, the completed version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly was published in book form. It had begun to appear in serialized form in June 1851 in the abolitionist weekly The National Era. Since its first appearance in serial form and as a book 160 [Read More]
225 Words that Changed the World: Happy Seuss Day
If your book was turned down by more than 40 publishers, “what would you do?” Become Dr. Seuss?
Joyce, Jesus, Goddesses & Groundhogs
Today is an auspicious date on the literary and liturgical calendars. James Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882.
On top of that it Candlemas and Groundhog Day.
Don’t Know Much About® Jack London
You probably remember Jack London for his tales of dogs in the Alaskan wilderness. But London was also caught up in a protest movement called “Coxey’s Army,” the “Occupy Wall Street” of the 1890s.