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.