Blog EBE English Book Education
This week we celebrate authors of the past and present who had birthdays in the month of February. Check them out below.
(Top L-R) Amy Tan, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Wilhelm Grimm, Charles Lamb, Johnston McCulley (Bottom L-R) Jules Verne, John Steinbeck, Victor Hugo, Susan Hill, James Joyce
James Joyce
(February 2, 1882 – January 13, 1941)
Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. He is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he utilized. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
Johnston McCulley
(February 2, 1883 – November 23, 1958)
was the author of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro.
Robert Coover
(February 4, 1932 – )
Coover is an American author and professor emeritus in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction. He is most noted for the Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady.
Susan Hill
(February 5, 1942 – )
Hill is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her most noted novel is The Woman in Black which was turned into a film in 2012. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to literature.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
(February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957)
Wilder was an American writer, most notably the author of the Little House on the Prairie books of children’s novels based on her childhood in a settler family. Her daughter encouraged her to write and helped her to edit and publish the novels.
Jules Verne
(February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905)
Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. One of his most popular books is Around the World in Eighty Days.
Charles Lamb
(February 10, 1775 – December 27, 1834)
Lamb was an English writer and essayist, best known for the children’s book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced with his sister, Mary Lamb.
Amy Tan
(February 19, 1952 – )
Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. Her best-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages. In 1993, the book was adapted into a commercially successful film.
Jonathan Safran Foer
(February 21, 1977 – )
Safran Foer is an American writer. He is best known for his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) which was adapted into a film in 2011.
Wilhelm Grimm
(February 24, 1786 – December 16, 1859)
Grimm was a German author, the younger of the Brothers Grimm. He is best known for writing, with his brother, Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Victor Hugo
(February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885)
Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. In France, Hugo’s literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Outside France, his best-known work is the acclaimed novel Les Misérables (1862).
John Steinbeck
(February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968)
Steinbeck was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939), widely attributed to be part of the American literary canon, is considered Steinbeck’s masterpiece. In the first 75 years since it was published, it sold 14 million copies.
