February 7

Born:

1478 - Thomas More
English Renaissance Humanist; coiner of the term "utopia."

1812 - Charles Dickens
English writer and social critic, one of the major authors of the Victorian age

1837 - James Murray
Scottish lexicographer and philologist, the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

1867 - Laura Ingalls Wilder
American writer whose Little House series was based on her own childhood.

1885 - Sinclair Lewis
American novelist, winner of the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters."

1908 - Fred Gipson
American author best known for his 1956 novel Old Yeller.

1922 - Marion Cunningham
American food writer, noted for her work on the 12th and 13th editions of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

1932 - Gay Talese
American author and literary journalist.

1943 - Eric Foner
American historian, whose book The Fiery Trial won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History.

1950 - Karen Joy Fowler
American author of science fiction, fantasy and literary fiction, best known for The Jane Austen Book Club.

1974 - Emma McLaughlin
American novelist, author of The Nanny Diaries with Nicola Kraus.





Died:
1823 - Anne Radcliffe
1970 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1998 - Lawrence Sanders
2001 - Anne Morrow Lindbergh