On this day...

American expatriate Sylvia Beach opened her bookshop-library Shakespeare & Co. in 1919. Located in Paris, the store soon became known for being one the centres for Anglo-American literary culture, and indeed not only were the great books of the age located within its walls, but the writers themselves often could be found there. James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald often visited, and Hemingway actually made a reference to SHakespeare & Co. in his novel 'The Moveable Feast'.

Beach also became renowned for stocking controversial works. Titles such as 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and 'Ulysses', banned in many countries across the world, could always be bought or borrowed for Beach's store. Although Paris was reduced to only 25,000 citizens, Beach kept the store going through the early years of World War One, until it was shut in 1941, supposedly because to refused to give a German officer her last copy of 'Finnegan's Wake'. Today it exists as 'Le Mistral', with the ethos of being 'a socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore'.

On this day...

Ernest Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls', was published in 1940. Coming 10 years after the publication of 'A Farewell to Arms', Hemingway's new novel marked his first real success since, with one critic commenting, 'Hemingway the artist is with us again; and it is like having an old friend back'. The title of the book is a quotation from John Donne's 'Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions', itself very famous, which starts with 'no man is an island, entire of itself..'.

Written partly while Hemingway was in Cuba, the work is based around his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, and thus depiction of death becomes its primary theme. Yet this has caused controversy about the style of Hemingway's narrative, as he, clumsily according to many, uses archaisms and transliterated Spanish to convey the sense of a foreign setting. The work was an undeniable success and sold over half a million copies within its first six months. It was also nominated for the 1941 Pulitzer Prize, yet the President of Columbia University decided that no award was to be given for letters that year, and so Hemingway's masterpiece was never recognised.

On this day...

Ernest Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' was published in 1929. Serialised in Scribner's magazine from May to October of that year, the semi-autobiographical novel took its title from a 16th century George Peele poem. The plot is formed from Hemingway's World War One experiences, focusing on indivual tragedy to accentuate the futility of the war as a whole, and thus perhaps offering a cynical commentary on American patriotism.

Yet writing the ending to the novel was not an easy process. Unhappy with his work, Hemingway sent off his manuscript to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who sent back 9 pages of revisions with the comment, 'our poor old friendship probably won't survive this but there you are...'. Hemingway's response was to write on the bottom of the page, 'kiss my ass'. The novel has been adapted for the screen twice, in 1932 and 1957 respectively.

On this day...

American writer Ernest Hemingway committed suicide in 1961, at the age of 61. However, rather than concentrate on his life, a fascinating and rich subject, it is the subject of his death which proves immediately intriguing. Tragedy seems to have somewhat rested upon the Hemingways, as Ernest, by his death, became only one of the five family members to commit suicide within four generations, the others including his father, two siblings, and granddaughter.

Certainly, during the last years of his life, Hemingway began to suffer from increasing mental deterioration, including spates of paranoia in which he believed the FBI to be monitoring him and his accounts. Later released medical records reveal treatments for deeping depression, alcohol dependency, and a number of physical ailments inherited from his father.

Yet the reason for shooting himself with his favourite shotgun in the early morning of July 2nd remains more indistinct. Hemingway had frequently been known to talk about death as a 'gift', and even his wife, who only admitted it was suicide five years after the event, had conceeded it might have been done for noble reasons in an act of defiance. Hemingway's brother, later to commit suicide himself, perhaps most aptly and poignantly gave reason; 'Like a samurai who felt dishonoured by the word or deed of another, Ernest felt his own body had betrayed him'.

On this day...

Russian author Anton Chekhov was born in 1860. The son of an abusive father, who is said to have formed many of his ideas on hypocrisy, Chekhov used simply the word 'suffering' to describe his childhood. When the family was declared bankrupt, they fled to Moscow, leaving the young Anton behind to sell their possessions. During this time, Chekhov began to write and upon moving to Moscow to attend the medical university, he utilised this talent to provide for his family. Writing under various pseudonyms, including 'man without a spleen', he contributed copious numbers of articles to prestigious city-based newspapers and periodicals; a period that culminated in him winning the Pushkin Prize, under the tutelage of Dmitry Grigorovich. Despite now suffering from tuberculosis, Chekhov encountered prolific literary form and went on to produce works now recognised in Russia's golden age of literature. 'Uncle Vanya', 'The Seagull' and 'The Cherry Orchard' are just three of Chekhov's best known works; works that acquired him the adulation of writers such as Joyce, Woolf, Hemingway, and most notably, George Bernard Shaw.

On this day...

American writer John Updike died in 2009, at the age of 76. It was from his early life that inspiration came, his mother's writing contributing to his own deisre to do the same. Such a literary passion continued through his student life, and he graduated from Harvard with an English degree having submitted copious amounts of articles to 'The Harvard Lampoon'. The next few years of his life were spent establishing himself both personally and in the literary world. As he began to write for the 'New Yorker' and publish early works, he was also suffering a spiritual crisis; both matters luckily ended well, as Updike found both success and a renewed Christian faith. Featuring the influences of more contemporary American writers such as J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote, Updike went on to produce one of the most famous series of books; that of 'Rabbit'. Such was the books' success, that Updike became one of only three people to twice win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Updike was a immensely popular writer, with public and critics alike. Fellow author Ian McEwan said of him, that his 'literary schemes and pretty conceits touched at points on the Shakespearean' and said his death signified 'the end of the golden age of the American novel'.

On this day...

British novelist, poet and critic Ford Madox Ford was born in 1873. Born Ford Hermann Heuffer, he changed his name in 1919, due to unpopular German connotations following the First World War. War proved a continuous theme in Ford's life; he worked for the War Propaganda Bureau, producing two books and afterwards enlisted in the Welsh Regiment. The theme, not surprisingly, also ran through his literature, and inspired his most famous work, 'The Good Soldier'. The novel, originally called 'The Saddest Story' was supposedly started on Ford's birthday, to 'show what [he] could do'. Critics have praised the work, calling it, 'the best French novel in the English language' and Ford, 'one of the dozen greatest novelists of the century'. Ford is also known for his journalistic achievements. He founded both 'The English Review' and 'The Transatlantic Review'; publishing authors such as Thomas Hardy, Henry James and Joseph Conrad, and giving a publishing debut to D.H. Lawrence. Ford is supposedly the model for Braddocks in Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises'.

GCSE makes you better than Hemingway...

A proposed new computerised marking system for A-Level English exams, has failed some of the most famous writers and orators that ever lived. The system was discussed last week at the Westminster Education Forum; a meeting which included heads of exam boards and the Charted Institute of Educational Assessors. It is thought that online marking will soon be introduced, with computers already marking some multiple choice GCSE papers and trials taking place for those which are essay based. Yet the system has encountered some flaws. Among those singled out for criticism, were Ernest Hemingway, for his 'lack of care in style of writing'; William Golding, for his 'innacurate and erratic sentance structure'; and Anthony Burgess for being 'incomprehensible'. Surely, if the 'classics' would have failed, it signifies against the popular belief, that A-Levels are actually getting harder? Or, at least, that it's more about a marking system than writing?