On this day...

French author Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, better known by pseudonym George Sand, was born in 1804. A distant cousin of Louis XVIII, Sand was, for the most part, raised by her grandmother in her estate of Nohant, a setting that frequently founds its way into her writings. Like so many women of her era, Sands got married at a young age, wedding her husband, Baron Casimir Dudevant, at the age of 19. Yet this, seemingly, is when her conformity with traditional society ends. Shortly after the birth of her two children, she left her husband to embark upon a so-called 'romantic rebellion', during which she had numerous affairs, reputedly with both men and women, the most famous of which was pianist Frederich Chopin.

Her appearance was also at odds with a usual woman of rank, sporting men's clothes in public due to their inexpensive nature, and smoking lliberal amounts of tobacco. Such was the scandal created by Sands, she attracted some heavy criticism, including the wrath of poet Charles Baudelaire, who stated that, 'the fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation'. Her literary debut, 'Rose et Blanche', was a collabrative effort with Jules Sandeua, whose name influenced her own later pseudonym. Her first solo novel, 'Indiana', is arguably her most famous work. Sand died in 1876, at the age of 71. 

On this day...

Soviet author Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov, better known as Maxim Gorky, died in 1936 at the age of 68. An orphan by the age of 10, Gorky ran away from home two years later to live with his grandmother, whose death deeply affected him and led to a suicide attempt at 19. Thus followed a nomadic period, as Gorky travelled around the Russian Empire on foot and dabbed in various occupations, before settling on local journalism. It was then that he assumed his pseudonym, Gorky, literally meaning bitter, reflecting his anger at Russian life and thus also demonstrating a desire to speak the truth, however harsh it may be. Yet it was the release of his first book, 'Essays and Stories', that established Gorky's wider literary success.

Thus started an outpouring of writings, as Gorky believed it a political duty to produce such works, ignoring the more aesthetic tendancies of his English contemporaries. He rapidly became associated with the growing Marxist movement, and, opposing the tsarist regime, also became increasingly supportive of Lenin and his Bolshevik movement, often being imprisoned for such fraternisation. Gorky spent large periods of the next few decades in Italy, returning only for material needs or at Stalin's behest - Stalin himself was even a pallbearer for Gorky's funeral. Considered a founder of the socialist realism movement, Gorky's most famous works include 'The Lower Depths', and 'The Life of Klim Sangin'.

On this day...

American author Daniel Handler, better known by pseudonym Lemony Snicket, was born in 1970. Having followed a reasonably usual education route, graduating from university in 1992, Handler attempted to publish under his own name. Yet having had his first novel, 'The Basic Eight', rejected 37 times due to the dark nature of its subject matter, Handler decided to acquire an alias, and chose to use Lemony Snicket.

The name has since been given a family history, a personal story, which includes felonies and secret societies, and the honour of narrating Handler's most famous works, 'The Series of Unfortunate Events'. The thirteen books, revolving around the lives and the ever increasing misery of circumstances of three orphans, have been translated into 41 languages and, as of May 2007, have sold 55 million copies. Handler has since further blurred the distinction of reality, by making several television appearances in which he is said to be Snicket's handler, or Snicket himself. Handler's next work, will be an adult novel about pirates.

On this day...

John Burgess Wilson, published under pen name Anthony Burgess, was born in 1917. More than just a novelist, Burgess excelled in fields of poetry, drama, criticism, linguistics, translation, and even music, composing over 250 musical works. Only months after his first birthday, tragedy hit the Wilson household, as both young Anthony's mother and sister died within four days of each other. This, said Burgess, led him to being 'either distractedly persecuted or ignored' by a father who resented him for having survived.

Denied doing music at university, sue to poor physics grades, Burgess went on to graduate in English, yet was soon enrolled in the services. Here, Burgess' flair for languages was utilised by army intelligence, and indeed from that time, Burgess was frequently involved in a teaching capacity. Following posts in Malaysia and Borneo, Burgess published his work famous work, the dystopian novel, 'A Clockwork Orange', in 1962. Although not perhaps met with wild enthusiasm at the time of publication, the novel is now considered a modern classics, and was voted by 'Time Magazine' as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

On this day...

English writer Charles Lutwig Dodgson, better known by pseudonym Lewis Carroll, died in 1898. Perhaps unusually for an author, Carroll was first an extremely proficient mathematician. Having attended Rugby school, he gained an Oxford place, and went on to achieve a first class honours and subsequent professorship. Shortly after, Carroll's work started to appear in national publications. Mostly of a humourous nature, it was printed in magazines ranging from 'The Comic Times' to 'The Oxford Critic'. It was from this that Carroll launched himself fully in art, becoming immersed in numerous forms, from literature itself, to photography and even inventions; an early variety of Scrabble has been attributed to his name. He also mixed with the preminent artistic crowd of the day, becoming friends with critic John Ruskin, and Dante Rossetti, John Everet Millais and William Hunter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Yet, of course his favourite medium was writing and he contributed significantly to the genres of fantasy and children's literature. As a writer of prose, he will be best remembered for the frequently adapted 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', yet as a poet, his most famous contribution was the nonsensical work, 'The Jabberwocky'.

On this day...

English novelist and poet, Emily Bronte died in 1848 at the age of 40. Part of the famous trio of sisters, know by respective pen names Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell, Emily had her first major publishing success with a joint collection of poems in 1846. Yet her real success was found in her gothic novel, 'Wuthering Heights', oublished in the same year as sister Charlotte's 'Jane Eyre'. The haunting and passionate love story is said to have been reflective of Emily's character; Charlotte stating it to be 'powerful and peculiar' and inspiring 'an anguish of wonder and love'. Such difficulty of character continued right until the end; she refused to allow a doctor to visit, only consenting to Charlotte's pleas a few hours before she died. Her death came at a time of great personal loss for the Brontes, her brother Branwell dying only three months previous, and sister Anne was to follow the next May.

On this day...

American novelist Cornell Woolrich, was born in 1903. Woolrich started his literary career by writing six works, including 'Cover Charge'; all whose inspiration is to be found in the 'Jazz Age' literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yet after finding them commercially unviable, Woolrich turned his hand to detective novels, often writng under pseudonyms of William Irish and George Hopley. This proved more successful, leading to Woolrich being rated by biographer Francis Nevins Jr., as the fourth best crime writer of his era, behind only Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet and Erle Stanley Gardner. Many of Woolrich's most famous works were adapted for screen, including Hitchcock's 'Rear Window', and Truffaut's 'The Bride Wore Black; this leads to him having the title of more film noir screenplays adapted from his works than any other writer. Woolrich died in 1968 at the age of 64; yet alcoholism and further trouble, meant that upon his death he weighed only 89 pounds. He left his $850,000 estate to Columbia University.

On this day...

Samuel Clemens, better known by pen name Mark Twain, was born in 1835. Twain began his literary career at the age of 12, contributing articles and sketches to the 'Hannibal Journal'; a newspaper owned by his brother. Yet deciding that it held better monetary prospects, with wages approximately equivalent to that of $155,000 today, Twain opted instead for the job of a steamboat captain; a job he held until the start of the civil war two years later. This conflict, as well as his upbringing in slave state Missouri, left him with a deep impression, and so slavery appears as a reoccuring theme throughout his works. After his brief nautical career, Twain moved back to writing, and it was then that he made his first breakthrough, with novel, 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'. However, his two most popular works are undoubtedly 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'; the former has come to be recognised as the 'Great American Novel'. Twain suffered great tragedy in his life, losing prematurely his father, daughter and wife; leading to bouts of depression. Twain himself died in 1910, at the age of 74.

On this day...

American author and historian, Washington Irving, died in 1859 at the age of 76. He made his literary debut in 1802, writing letters to the 'Morning Chronicle' under pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. Having moved to England in 1815 to help the family business, Irving furthered his budding enthusiasm for writing, and by 1819 he had published his best known work, 'The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. The collection of short stories were published in seven installments, and included 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'. Also a historian, Irving wrote numerous biographies of figures such as George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Christopher Columbus. He is among the first American authors to gain acclaim in Europe and preceeding other trans-Atlantic successes Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving is the reason behind two slightly more obscure pieces of trivia; he popularised the name 'Gotham' for New York city, as used in the Batman comics, and also introduced the dubious belief that the people of the Middle Ages thought the Earth to be flat.

On this day...

Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson sent a handwritten manuscript of 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground' to Alice Liddell in 1864. Dodgson, better known by pseudonym Lewis Carroll, found inspiration for the work from a boat trip down the Isis river, during which he told a story to entertain three young sisters on board, one of whom was Alice Liddell. His idea proved so popular that Dodgson spent the next two years writing it out by hand; bound in morocco leather and illustrated by his own hand, he gave it to Alice as a Christmas present with the inscription, ‘A Christmas gift to a dear child, in memory of a summer’s day’. At this time Dodgson was already expanding the novel, adding in such episodes as the Cheshire Cat and Mad Hatter, to ready it for publication. Published in 1865, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' was immediately popular, with Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde said to be among its readers. The book has now been translated in over 125 languages and has a sequel, 'Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There'.

On this day...

Victorian author Mary Anne Evans, later to be known as George Eliot, was born in 1819. Upon the death of her father in 1849, to whom she was devoted, Evans moved to London, where she stayed at the house of John Chapman; the recently installed editor of left-wing journal 'The Westminster Review'. Evans became assisstant editor a year later, contributing numerous essays and reviews until her departure in 1856. Evans' wider literary career was about to launch, yet it was her private life which gathered more public interest; she lived with, and considered herself to be wedded to, married journalist George Lewes. Socially unacceptable in the pious Victorian era, it was these circumstances that forced Evans to adopt pen name George Eliot to hide her marital status; an alias also used to distance herself from the romantic female novelists of the day. During her lifetime she produced many well known works of both prose and poetry; her most famous novels being, 'Middlemarch', 'Silas Marner', and 'The Mill on the Floss'. Evans died in 1880, aged 61.

On this day...

François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, was born in 1694. Voltaire was a student of classical languages, and it was from this that his pseudonym came; an anagram of Arovet Li, the Latinised version of his surname, just one of the 178 aliases he is known to have taken. Part of the French Enlightenment movement, which included Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire believed in reason as the basis of authority, questioning the traditional institutions and customs of the time. Although a philosopher by first trade, he soon became a prolific writer of almost every literary form; including poetry, drama, novels and more than 20,000 letters. His sharp wit led Voltaire to being imprisioned in the Bastille, then exiled to England, sparking his subsequent attempts to reform the French judicial system. His best known work remains 'Candide', and he died in 1778 aged 83. When asked on his deathbed by a priest to renounce the devil and turn to God, he is alleged to have replied, 'Now is no time to be making new enemies'.

Another side to Austen?...

Also on this day, 'Sense and Sensibility', Jane Austen's first novel, was published in 1811. Austen wrote the original draft of the novel, as 'Elinor and Marianne', when she was only 19; and the two title characters are thought to be based on her sister Cassandra and herself. The novel, published under the pseudonym 'A Lady', was advertised as being 'new', 'extraordinary' and 'interesting'. Early reviewers stated it to be 'a genteel, well-written novel' and 'just long enough to interest without fatiguing'; however it is said that Austen was at her most satirical, the writer Virgina Woolf suggesting that 'it seems as if her characters were born merely to give Jane Austen the supreme delight of slicing their heads off'. The 750 copy first edition sold out in a year and a half, Austen making a profit of £140.