Thomas Hughes, b. 1822.
Arthur Rimbaud, b. 1854. A decadent poet for my French readers.
Fortunately, I don’t read French.
John Dewey, b. 1859, pragmatist and educator. In fact, Dewey was so pragmatic that if you don’t like this quotation, you can probably find one that says the exact opposite that you will like.
“Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”
Crockett Johnson, b. 1906. Author of Harold and the Purple Crayon.
Michael Wigglesworth, b. 1631 in England, but lived most of his life in America, a pastor in Malden, Massachusetts. He married three times and had eight children. And he became a doctor in addition to being a preacher and a writer. He wrote a long poem, 224 stanzas, called The Day of Doom. The theme of the poem was the Judgment Seat of Christ, and Wigglesworth portrays vividly both the delight of the saved and the despair of the damned, spending rather more stanzas on the goats or the non-elect. Here’s a sample of the Puritan, Calvinist theology of the poem:
Of Man’s fall’n Race, who can true Grace,
or Holiness obtain?
Who can convert or change his heart,
if God withhold the same?
Had we apply’d our selves, and try’d
as much as who did most
God’s love to gain, our busie pain
and labour had been lost.Christ readily makes this Reply,
I damn you not because
You are rejected, or not elected,
but you have broke my Laws:
It is but vain your wits to strain,
the end and means to sever:
Men fondly seek to part or break
what God hath link’d together.Whom God will save, such he will have,
the means of life to use:
Whom he’ll pass by, shall chuse to dy,
and ways of life refuse.
He that fore-sees, and foredecrees,
in wisdom order’d has,
That man’s free-will electing ill,
shall bring his will to pass.
Here’s the interesting part:
Published in 1662, The Day of Doom became America’s first best seller, circulating 1800 copies during the first year. It has been estimated that at one time one copy was owned for every thirty-five people in all of New England; every other family must have had The Day of Doom on its parlor table. The poem went through ten editions in the next fourteen decades, four in the seventeenth century and six in the eighteenth.
Can you imagine such a poem becoming a bestseller nowadays?
James Leigh Hunt, b. 1784 wrote a poem about the Judgment that is much more acceptable to our current sensibilities: Abou Ben Adhem.
P.G. Wodehouse, b. 1881. I’ve blogged about Wodehouse before, most notably here. I added Wodehouse to the syllabus for my British literature class next spring just because I want to find one more kindred spirit who laughs out loud at Bertie and Jeeves. Eldest Daughter already shares my appreciation for Wodehouse. If you want to laugh and feel “velly English”, read something by Wodehouse. It doesn’t really matter which Jeeves book you read; they all have approximately the same plot. Bertie, a somewhat dim bulb of an aristocrat, gets himself into a pickle usually involving a young woman and an aunt or two, and his manservant, Jeeves, gets him out. It’s not the plot exactly, although the situations Bertie gets into are funny in or of themselves; it’s the dialog and Bertie’s observations on life and love, and Jeeves’ observations on Bertie, and the silly characters they get mixed up with.
George Orwell in Defense of P.G. Wodehouse Wodehouse was interned by the Germans at the beginning of WW II, and in exchange for being released or because he was released and though he owed them something or just because he liked to talk, he agreed to do some broadcasts over German radio. He said a lot of stuff in these broadcasts, but part of what he said was that he didn’t really care who won the war and that he thought the Germans had treated him well during the time he was imprisoned. The reaction in England to these radio broadcasts was to make Wodehouse hugely unpopular. The link is to George Orwell’s 1946 defense of Wodehouse. Orwell basically says what everybody else who defends Wodehouse’s action says: Wodehouse knew next to nothing about politics, and he had no idea that anything he said would be used by the Nazis for the purposes of propaganda.
Enjoy the books; forget the politics.
Her first name was Anna, and she was born October 11, 1884.
Her mother died of diptheria when Anna was only eight, and her father died two years later.
She was educated at home by private tutors until she was fifteen years old.
She was married on St. Patrick’s Day, 1905, to her fifth cousin.
Her husband was a wealthy and accomplished man with a very controlling mother. Anna’s mother-in-law, according to most accounts, made Anna’s marriage difficult.
She gave birth to six children, one of whom died in infancy.
She wrote a syndicated newspaper column, My Day and an autobiography, This Is My Story.
She was an accomplished archer and bowhunter.
She was the first presidential wife to give her own news conference in the White House.
She was the niece of one US president and married to another.
For children I suggest the following books about Anna Eleanor Roosevelt and her times:
A Picture Book of Eleanor Roosevelt by David Adler
A Letter to Mrs. Roosevelt by C. Coco De Young Fiction based on fact about an 11-year old girl who writes a letter to Mrs. Roosevelt asking her to help her family during the Great Depression.f
Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride by Pam Munoz Ryan A true story about Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart sneaking off for a ride in Amelia’s airplane.
Hugh Miller, b. 1802. Scottish geologist and folklorist, contemporary of Charles Darwin, defender of creationism but not of a worldwide flood, evangelical Christian, one of the founding members of the Free Church of Scotland. “His books, such as The Old Red Sandstone, The Cruise of the Betsey, Footprints of the Creator, Testimony of the Rocks, Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, and My Schools and Schoolmasters (autobiography) became bestsellers in many editions.” He was self-taught in geology, but respected by the leading scientists of his day. He committed suicide on Christmas Eve, 1856, because he feared that he was going insane. Read more about this fascinating scientist and Christian.
Henry Alford, b. 1810. Henry Alford was also a Christian, a cleric who became dean of Canterbury Cathedral. He edited the poems of John Donne, another Church of England cleric, translated The Odyssey into English, and wrote a four-volume commentary on the Greek New Testament. His deep commitment to God is shown in these words which he wrote in his Bible on November 18, 1827, when he was only seventeen years old: “I do this day, as in the presence of God and my own soul, renew my covenant with God, and solemnly determine henceforth to become His, and to do His work as far as in me lies.” Alford also wrote the hymn Come Ye Thankful People, Come.
Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
Come to God�s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.All the world is God�s own field, fruit unto His praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown unto joy or sorrow grown.
First the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take His harvest home;
From His field shall in that day all offenses purge away,
Giving angels charge at last in the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store in His garner evermore.Even so, Lord, quickly come, bring Thy final harvest home;
Gather Thou Thy people in, free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified, in Thy garner to abide;
Come, with all Thine angels come, raise the glorious harvest home.
It’s going to be a great part of heaven’s harvest to sit down and talk with some of the saints who have gone before us, to hear the complete stories of how God was glorified through their lives. Even those imperfect lives–like mine.
August 2, 1877, the following poem was printed in the Kokomo Indiana Dispatch:
LEONAINIE
Leonainie – angels named her;
And they took the light
Of the laughing stars and framed her
In a smile of white:And they made her hair of gloomy
Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy
Moonshine, and they brought her to me
In the solemn night.In a solemn night of summer,
When my heart of gloom
Blossomed up to meet the comer
Like a rose in bloom;All the forebodings that distressed me
I forgot as joy caressed me —
(Lying joy that caught and pressed me
In the arms of doom!)Only spake the little lisper
In the angel-tongue;
Yet I, listening, heard her whisper, –
“Songs are only sungHere below that they may grieve you –
Tales are told you to deceive you –
So must Leonainie leave you
While her love is young.”Then God smiled and it was morning,
Matchless and supreme;
Heaven’s glory seemed adorning
Earth with its esteem:Every heart but mine seemed gifted
With the voice of prayer, and lifted
Where my Leonainie drifted
From me like a dream.
The poem was said to be the work of none other than Edgar Allan Poe, posthumously discovered inscribed in the flyleaf of an old book. Within a few days Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley wrote the following response to the discovery of the poem in his own newspaper:
THE POET POE IN KOKOMO
Passing the many assailable points of the story egarding the birth and late discovery of the poem, we will briefly consider first – IS POE THE AUTHOR OF IT? That a poem contains some literary excellence is not assurance that its author is a genius known to fame, for how many waifs of richest worth are now afloat upon the literary sea whose authors are unknown and whose nameless names have never marked the graves that hid their value from the world; and in the present instance we have no right to say, -“This is Poe’s work – for who but Poe could mould a name like LEONAINIE?” and all that sort of flighty flummery. . . . To sum up the poem as a whole we are at some loss. It most certainly contains rare attributes of grace and beauty; and although we have not the temerity to accuse the gifted Poe of its authority, for equal strength of reason we cannot
deny that it is his production . . .
On August 25th, it was revealed that the poem was the work, not of Edgar Allan Poe, but rather of James Whitcomb Riley himself, who perpetrated the hoax in order to prove that his own poetry was worthy of publication in the finest newspapers and journals and had only been rejected because he was not already famous and accepted as a great poet. Riley was also a great admirer of Thomas Chatterton, a forger of poems in his right, but Riley, unlike Chatterton, went on to become famous in his own right as the author of poems such as Little Orphant Annie, The Raggedy Man and When the Frost Is on the Punkin.
Read all about the Leonainie Hoax.
I learned a new word: kenotic. “The term derives from the Greek “kenos” or “empty” and stands for a poetry of humility or of experience “emptied” of ground for boast or pride. Riley’s kenotic poetry is nothing less than poetry that participates in the mind of a humble God situated on a cross noting human events. Such writing requires dialectical or “koine” (as it is called today) expression. No other American writer before or since has proven Riley’s equal. Much of its power derives from Riley’s fervent and pioneer Methodist roots but also much comes from Riley’s experiences in life.”
Riley wrote kenotic peotry, and I write a kenotic blog. Happy Birthday, Mr. Riley, b. 1849, d. 1916.
Edward L. Stratemeyer, b. 1862, creator of the Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift series of mysteries for young readers. He and his Stratemeyer Syndicate published more than 800 titles.
Donald Sobol, b. 1924, author of the series of children’s books about Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective.
Isn’t it interesting that both of these creators of mystery series were born on the same day?
“Readers constantly ask me if Encyclopedia is a real boy. The answer is no … He is, perhaps, the boy I wanted to be — doing the things I wanted to read about but could not find in any book when I was ten.”–Donald Sobol
“Young folks are the most direct critics in the world. Any writer who has the young for an audience can snap his fingers at all the other critics.”–Edward Stratemeyer
“Stratemeyer would come up with a three-page plot for each book, describing locale, characters, time frame, and a basic story outline. He mailed this to a writer, who, for a fee ranging from fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars, would write the thing up and “slam-bang!” send it back within a month. Stratemeyer checked the manuscripts for discrepancies, made sure that each book had exactly fifty jokes, and cut or expanded as needed.”
Oh, by the way, speaking of Banned Books, the library in my hometown engaged in a bit of “censorship” of its own when I was a kid of a girl; they would purchase books about neither Nancy Drew nor Trixie Belden, my two favorite girl detectives. The librarian said that they were not of sufficient literary quality to be shelved at our public library.
We’re rather fond of kid detectives around here: Encyclopedia Brown, Can Jansen, Nate the Great, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, and Detectives in Togas are all favorites at the Semicolon household. Who are your favorite authors of mysteries for kids? Who are your favorite young detectives?
Emily Post, b. 1873, d. 1960. She was born Emily Price, daughter of a wealthy architect and his wife. She was educated at home (homeschooled) and later attended a finishing school in New York. Her society marriage ended in divorce, and she was forced by financial circumstances to write in order to support herself. Her 1922 book on etiquette became a bestseller and provided a comfortable living.
Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality: the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life…. Etiquette must, if it is to be of more than trifling use, include ethics as well as manners. Certainly what one is, is of far greater importance than what one appears to be.
Kate Douglas Wiggin, b. 1856, author and educator. She wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Birds’ Christmas Carol. Eldest Daughter always thought Rebecca compared rather unfavorably to L.M. Mongomery’s Anne of Green Gables, but I remember enjoying both books and both heroines.
Read Rebecca online. Or better yet, read this story, A Cathedral Courtship, by KDW that I happened upon while googling about the web. Sample quotes from the story of a young American girl and her Aunt Celia who are touring the cathedrals of Europe:
Aunt Celia is one of those persons who are born to command, and when they are thrown in contact with those who are born to be commanded all goes as merry as a marriage bell; otherwise not. Oh, aren’t you thinking of someone just like Aunt Celia right now?
Aunt Celia says we shall have no worthy architecture until every building is made an exquisitely sincere representation of its deepest purpose,–a symbol, as it were, of its indwelling meaning. I should think it would be very difficult to design a lunatic asylum on that basis, but I didn’t dare say so, as Mr. Copley seemed to think it all right. Perhaps a maze? Or a building full of cubicles?
Wiggin also wrote an autobiography, My Garden of Memories, and an adult novel, The Village Watchtower. I may add both to The List.
Edith Mary Pargeter, b. 1913. She wrote several fine historical fiction novels, including The Heaven Tree Trilogy about a thirteenth century family of British stonecarvers. Of course, Pargeter’s more famous series of books
Upton Sinclair, b. 1878, socialist author of The Jungle, a novel about the meat-packing industry that resulted in passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) and The Meat Inspection Act (1906)).
Upton Sinclair, letter of resignation from the Socialist Party (September, 1917)
I have lived in Germany and know its language and literature, and the spirit and ideals of its rulers. Having given many years to a study of American capitalism. I am not blind to the defects of my own country; but, in spite of these defects, I assert that the difference between the ruling class of Germany and that of America is the difference between the seventeenth century and the twentieth.
No question can be settled by force, my pacifist friends all say. And this in a country in which a civil war was fought and the question of slavery and secession settled! I can speak with especial certainty of this question, because all my ancestors were Southerners and fought on the rebel side; I myself am living testimony to the fact that force can and does settle questions – when it is used with intelligence.
In the same way I say if Germany be allowed to win this war – then we in America shall have to drop every other activity and devote the next twenty or thirty years to preparing for a last-ditch defence of the democratic principle.
I wonder what Sinclair would say about the war in Iraq were he alive today? Also, just out of curiousity, did anyone else become a vegetarian for a week or two after reading The Jungle in high school? I would strongly suggest that you NOT read Sinclair’s muckraking classic if you are squeamish or if you wish to remain comfortable in your meat-eating habits. Then again, if you want cheap motivation for a healthier diet . . .