Beach, Whitman & Company
March 14: Sylvia Beach was born on this day in 1887. Beach's Shakespeare & Company would offer a home and a helping hand to many, and become "a stronghold in attacks against the rights of free speech." Beach's legacy, including her leftover books a...
Spooked by "Ghosts"
March 13: Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts premiered in London on this day in 1891. Theater historians report that the scandal over this single "controversial and epoch-making" performance elicited over 500 printed articles and made Ibsen "a household word even a...
Growing Up Albee
March 12: Edward Albee was born on this day in 1928. Albee left home at age nineteen, moving to Greenwich Village. In interviews, the playwright has described how stimulating he found Village life, and how he had grown to detest life at home with his a...
Taking Tibet
March 10: The Tibetan Uprising began on this day in 1959, when some 300,000 Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama's Lhasa residence, reacting to rumors that the occupying Chinese forces planned to abduct him. This defiant act set in motion the event...
Woolf’s Voyage Out
March 9: Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out, her first novel, was delivered to the printer on this day in 1913. Although neither as experimental nor as famous as Woolf's later work, the book is regarded as a first glimpse into the themes and techniques th...
Volk Rock
March 8: The Volkswagen minibus went into production on this day in 1950, and Bill Graham's Fillmore East opened on this day in 1968. The two events meet at the American counterculture, the Fillmore(s) providing the rock, the VW providing the roll, esp...
The Birth of a "Scientist"
March 7: The English astronomer John Herschel was born on this day in 1792. Apart from his original work in astronomy and other areas, Herschel's place in science history is based on his efforts to transform scientific study from a gentleman's avocatio...
Magical Márquez
March 6: Gabriel García Márquez was born on this day in 1928. Márquez's Living to Tell the Tale (2003), a memoir of his first twenty-seven years, is prefaced by his comment, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and h...
Thomas in Llareggub
March 5: Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood was published on this day in 1954, just four months after his death in New York. Most of the play was written during Thomas's last years, after he had returned to Wales to live at the Boat House in Laugharne. His...
Forster, India
March 4: E. M. Forster set out for India on this day in 1921, heading for his post as secretary to the maharaja of Dewas Senior. The trip brought A Passage to India a crucial step nearer to completion and helped to inspire his travel memoir, The Hill o...
Godwin’s Firsts
March 3: William Godwin was born on this day in 1756. Most discussions of Godwin start with one or more items from his impressive list of "firsts" -- among the first exponents of utilitarianism, the first to articulate and advocate anarchism, and the w...
Irving’s "Person"-ality
March 2: John Irving turns seventy today. Irving says that if his forthcoming novel, In One Person, contains some of his inescapable "obsessions" -- loss of childhood innocence, absent parents, sexual outsiders and misfits -- he is not entirely respons...
