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Arts And Literature!
December 17, 1843
Charles Dicken's immoral fable, A Christmas Carol, is first
published in London. On its first day on sale, 6,000 copies
are snatched up before all the booksellers close for the evening.
Unfortunately, A Christmas Carol and his earlier works will
bring Dickens little income (compared to what they have earned),
largely because the books are pirated in America, a large and
lucrative market.
November
1, 1512
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, featuring the massive painting
of Michelangelo, is unveiled four and a half years after the
master began working on it.
February
11, 1778
Voltaire, author of Candide, ended twenty eight years of exile
and returned to Paris. Hundreds greet his return.
Jan
29, 1845
Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, "The Raven," is first published
in the New York Evening Mirror. The writer is 36. It is destined
to become one of the best known poems in the Western Hemisphere.
January
2, 1635
Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to France's King Louis XIII,
establishes the Academie Francaise to promote native literature
and the arts.
June
3, 1924
Czech novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka dies in Kierling,
Austria, leaving instructions to his literary executor Max Brod
to burn all his papers. (Fortunately, Brod won't follow the
order: among the unpublished manuscripts are The Trial, The
Castle, and Amerika.)
January
31, 1901
Stanislavsky directs the premier production of Anton Chekhov's
Three Sisters at the Moscow Art Theater, with Chekhov's wife,
one of the company's leads, taking the stage in one of the parts.
November
18, 1926
Playwright George Bernard Shaw accepts the Nobel Prize for literature,
but turns down the money that accompanies it. Three days ago,
Pygmalion, his play about an English professor who bets he can
make a "lady" out of a woman selling flowers on the street opened
on Broadway to generally good reviews.
September
2, 1854
A classic appears on the American scene with publication of
Henry David Thoreau's Walden, a book of essays based upon his
two years spent "living simply," close to nature, in a cabin
on Walden Pond in Massachusetts.
December
20, 1968
One of America's most influential authors, John Steinbeck, dies.
Steinbeck was awarded a Pultizer for his 1939 novel, The Grapes
of Wrath and received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1962.
Among other works for which he is remembered areOf Mice and
Men, Cannery Row, and East of Eden. Stienbeck was 66.
February
1, 1896
The premiere performance of Puccini's great opera, La Boheme,
is held in Turin, Italy.
January
7, 1924
Roy Chapman Andrews, curator of the Museum of Natural History
in New York, offers a dinosaur egg for auction to raise funds
for further explorations. Bidding will open at $3,500 for the
egg, which is guaranteed to be at least 10 million years old.
March
1, 1360
England's King Edward III shells out a ransom equal to nearly
$4,000 today for a soldier taken prisoner during the siege of
Rheims. But this is no ordinary Johnny the French have under
lock and key-it's Geoffrey Chaucer, who 25 years from now will
write THE CANTERBURY TALES and go down in literary history as
one of Britain's greatest poets.
June
15, 1300
Italian poet and statesman Dante Alighieri is elevated to the
role of Prior of Florence. The author of The Divine Comedy is
destined for a relatively short term in office as he will be
banned from his native city within two years.
February
11, 1778
Voltaire, author of Candide, ends 28 years of exile and returned
to Paris. Some 300 visitors drop by to see with him.
December
9, 1854
Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous poem, The Charge of the Light
Brigade, is published in London's Examiner. He is inspired to
write it after reading the London Times's account of the legendary
charge by the Light Brigade on Russian gun positions, during
the Crimean War. The heroic action "into the jaws of death,"
was actually the result of a misinterpretation of orders given
to the brigade's commander and resulted in the death of 247
of the 673 mounted men in 20 minutes.
November
1, 1850
The final monthly installment of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield
is published. It has received the greatest critical acclaim
of all his works.
May
7, 1871
What is to become one of the best-known American paintings is
on exhibit in Pennsylvania. Originally entitled Arrangement
in Grey and Black, it will be more popularly known as Whistler's
Mother. The artist originally opined that no one would be interested
in knowing the subject.
August
28, 1850
Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, about the adventures of a medieval
German knight, receives its first public performance. The opera
includes the "Bridal Chorus," popularly known as "Here Comes
the Bride."
June
5, 1851
The first installment of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin appears in a new magazine The National Era.
September 1, 1904
Helen Keller, who lost her sight and hearing before she was
two, is awarded a degree with honors from Radcliffe College
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her autobiography, Story of My
Life, was published last year.
June
9, 1879
Perhaps the greatest storyteller in the English language, Charles
Dickens, dies in his country house at Gads Hill Place, England.
From his earliest sketches of London, and through suck works
as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations, Dickens
captured the imagination and admiration of the English-speaking
world and was the best-selling author of his day.
February
2, 1922
James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses, about 24 hours in the life
of a Dublin salesman, is published (in English) in Paris on
his 40th birthday. On Joyce's 57th birthday, he will hold in
his had the first edition of his experimental novel, Finnegan's
Wake.
August
31, 1933
Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is published.
The writer says that she herself, Pablo Picasso, and Alfred
North Whitehead are the only geniuses she has ever met.
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