February 28 (and 29)

Born:

1533 - Michel de Montaigne
French Renaissance writer; popularizer of the essay.

1895 - Marcel Pagnol
French writer best known for his novel Jean de Florette.

1946 - Steve Martini
American author of legal thrillers.

1959 - Megan McDonald
American children's author, known for her Judy Moody books.

1965 - Colum McCann
Irish writer of literary fiction, whose Let the Great World Spin won the 2009 National Book Award.

1970 - Lemony Snicket
Pen name of Daniel Handler, author of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books.




Died:
1916 - Henry James
1986 - Laura Z. Hobson
2004 - Daniel J. Boorstin
2007 - Arthur M. Schlessinger, Jr.

And the leaplings:

February 29:

1908 - Dee Brown
American novelist and historian whose most famous work is Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

1920 - Howard Nemerov
American poet; winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1978, and U.S. Poet Laureate from 1963-64 and 1988-90.

1948 - Patricia McKillip
American author of science fiction and fantasy.

1952 - Tim Powers
American author of science fiction and fantasy.

February 27

Born:

1807 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
American poet and author; one of the Fireside Poets.

1850 - Laura E. Richards
American author, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for a biography of her mother, Julia Ward Howe.

1888 - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.
American historian and author, father of author Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

1902 - John Steinbeck
American writer, winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception."

1904 - James T. Farrell
American novel best known for the Studs Lonigan trilogy.

1910 - Peter DeVries
American novelist and editor known for his satiric wit, especially having to do with religion.

1912 - Lawrence Durrell
Expatriate British writer whose most famous work was his Alexandria quartet.

1913 - Irwin Shaw
American writer best known for his novel The Young Lions, which was adapted into the Marlon Brando film.

1934 - N. Scott Momaday
Native American author (Kiowa) whose novel House Made of Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969.

1934 - Ralph Nader
American political activist who became famous in 1965 with the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, an indictment of safety issues in the automobile industry.

1935 - Uri Shulevitz
American author; winner of the 1969 Caldecott Medal.

1944 - Ken Grimwood
American author of fantasy fiction, most notably Replay.




Died:
1977 - John Dickson Carr
1990 - Josephine Johnson
2008 - William F. Buckley, Jr.

February 26

Born:

1802 - Victor Hugo
French poet and novelist, best known for Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.




1909 - Fanny Craddock
Pseudonym of Phillis Nan Sortain Pechey, English food writer with a decidedly unappetizing pen name.

1918 - Theodore Sturgeon
American science fiction and horror author whose best known work is More Than Human.

1948 - Sharyn McCrumb
American writer whose fiction series' tend to center around Appalachia.

1949 - Elizabeth George 
American author of mysteries set in Great Britain; creator of the Inspector Lynley character.

1956 - Michel Houellebecq
French author, director and magician (?), winner of the 2010 Prix Goncourt for The Map and the Territory.

1962 - Atiq Rahimi
French-Afghan writer and filmmaker whose 2008 novel Syngue Sabor (The Patience Stone) won the Prix Goncourt.






Died:
2014 - Phyllis Krasilovsky

February 25

Born:

1905 - Perry Miller
American historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, to whom Margaret Atwood dedicated her book The Handmaid's Tale.

1917 - Anthony Burgess
English writer, best known as the author of the dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange.

1930 - Sister Wendy Beckett
British hermit who presented a series of programs on the meaning of art for the BBC in the 1980's.

1942 - John Saul
American author of suspense and horror novels.

1942 - Cynthia Voight
American young adult author, winner of the 1983 Newbery Medal for Dicey's Song.

1949 - Amin Maalouf
Lebanese-born French author, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for The Rock of Tanios.

1949 - Jack Handey
American humorist and, um, "deep thinker."





Died:
1964 - Grace Metalious
1983 - Tennessee Williams
1998 - W.O. Mitchell
2001 - A.R. Ammons
2001 - L.R. Wright
2009 - Philip José Farmer

February 24

Born:

1786 - Wilhelm Grimm
German author and folklorist, younger of the Brothers Grimm.

1852 - George More
Irish author best known for his early work in Paris and London as a struggling artist.

1943 - Kent Haruf
American novelist whose fiction is mostly based in Colorado.




Died:
1825 - Thomas Bowdler
1957 - Helen Sewell
1974 - Margaret Leech
1999 - Andre Dubus
2006 - Octavia E. Butler
2012 - Jan Berenstain
2020 - Clive Cussler

February 23

Born:

1868 - W.E.B. duBois
American civil rights activist and author whose best known work is The Souls of Black Folk.




1877 - Frederic L. Paxson
American historian, winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize in History.

1882? - B. Traven
Possible birthdate of the enigmatic author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

1899 - Erich Kästner
German writer best known for his satiric poetry and children's literature.

1904 - William M. Shirer
American journalist and historian, most well known for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a National Book Award winner.

1944 - John Sandford
Pen name of John Roswell Camp. Best known for his Prey series, he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist before he started writing fiction.

1944 - Bernard Cornwell
British author of historical novels, particularly his series revolving around Richard Sharpe.

1953 - Walter Wick
American photographer known for the intricate photographs in his I Spy series of books.




Died:
1821 - John Keats
1958 - Leonard D. White
1984 - Jessamyn West
1995 - James Herriot

February 22

Born:
1819 - James Russell Lowell
American Romantic poet, associated with the Fireside Poets group.

1863 - Charles McLean Andrews
American historian; Pulitzer Prize in History winner for 1935.

1890 - Duff Cooper
British politician, diplomat and author.

1892 - Edna St. Vincent Millay
American feminist poet who received the 1923 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

1925 - Edward Gorey
American writer and artist known for his illustrated books, often set in Edwardian and Victorian times.

1937 - Joanna Russ
American feminist writer, best known for the satiric novel The Female Man









1945 - Gerald Stern
American poet, winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

1947 - Richard North Patterson
American author of legal and political thrillers.





Died:
1973 - Elizabeth Bowen

1978 - Hal Borland
1978 - Phyllis McGinley

1999 - William Bronk