May 7

Born:

1812 - Robert Browning
English poet and playwright, married to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

1861 - Rabindranath Tagore
Bengali author; in 1913 first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the west."

1867 - Władysław Reymont
Polish novelist, winner of the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his great national epic, The Peasants."

1892 - Archibald MacLeish
American poet and Librarian of Congress; three time winner af a Pulitzer Prize.

1927 - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
German-born British and American novelist and screenwriter.

1931 - Gene Wolfe
American science fiction and fantasy writer.

1932 - Nonny Hogrogrian
Armenian-American children's author, two-time Caldecott Medal winner.

1940 - Angela Carter
English novelist best known for her 1984 work Nights at the Circus.

1943 - Peter Carey
Australian novelist; two-time Booker Prize winner.





Died:
1941 - James Frazer

May 6

Born:

1856 - Sigmund Freud
Austrian neurologist and the founding father of psychoanalysis.

1868 - Gaston Leroux
French journalist and author of detective fiction, best known as the author of the novel The Phantom of the Opera.

1902 - Harry Lewis Golden
Jewish American journalist and author who wrote satirically on race relations.

1904 - Harry Martinson
Swedish sailor, author and poet; Joint winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature (with Eyvind Johnson) for "writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos."

1910 - Leo Lionni
Netherlands-born author and illustrator of children's books; four-time Caldecott award winner.

1914 - Randall Jarrell
American poet and author; U.S. Poet Laureate from 1956-1958.

1915 - Theodore H. White
American political journalist, best known for his work in China and for his Making of the President series.

1935 - Ted Lewin
American children's book author and illustrator, whose Peppe the Lamplighter won a Caldecott Honor in 1994.

1950 - Jeffrey Deaver
American mystery and crime writer, known for his Lincoln Rhyme series as well as for his one James Bond novel.



Died:
1862 - Henry David Thoreau
1902 - Bret Harte
1919 - L. Frank Baum
1949 - Maurice Maeterlink
1983 - Ezra Jack Keats

May 5

Born:

1818 - Karl Marx
Prussian-German philosopher and socialist, whose best known work is The Communist Manifesto.

1846 - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Polish author; winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize for Literature "because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer."

1903 - James Beard
American chef and food writer; instrumental in bringing French cooking to the country in the 1950s.

1943 - Michael Palin
English comedian and member of Monty Python enjoying a second career as a travel writer and documentarian.

1947 - Linda Fairstein
American author and controversial former prosecutor who writes the Alexandra Cooper novels.

1953 - Deborah Wiles
American children's book author, known for her Aurora County trilogy.

1963 - Scott Westerfeld
American author of young adult science fiction, known for the Uglies series.

1964 - Tom Reiss
American author whose The Black Count won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

1979 - Catherynne Valente
American author of postmodern fantasy and "mythpunk."

1986 - Robyn Schneider
American author who also writes for a younger audience as Violet Haberdasher.





Died:
1988 - Michael Shaara

May 4

Born:

1940 - Robin Cook
American physician and novelist who combines medical fiction with the thriller genre.

1941 - George Will
American conservative writer whose works tend to cover politics or baseball.

1949 - Graham Swift
English writer of magical realism, winner of the 1996 Booker Prize for Last Orders.

1956 - David Guterson
American author best known for Snow Falling on Cedars, which was made into a feature film.

1979 - Kristin Harmel
American author whose books tend to fall into the chick lit genre.




Died:
1924 - E. Nesbit
1950 - William Rose Benét

May 3

Born:

1469 - Niccolò Machiavelli
Italian political ethicist best known for his work The Prince.

1849 - Jacob Riis
Danish american journalist and photographer whose How the Other Half Lives explored the lives of New York tenement dwellers.

1859 - Andy Adams
American author of western fiction, whose most successful book was Log of a Cowboy.

1896 - Dodie Smith
English novelist and playwright, best known for her work The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

1947 - Mavis Jukes
American children's author who won the Newbery Award in 1985 for Like Jake and Me.

1959 - Ben Elton
English comedian and author of wide-ranging fiction.






Died:
1932 - Charles Fort
1974 - Margaret Clapp
1991 - Jerzy Kosiński
2006 - Peter Viereck
2010 - Peter O'Donnell

May 2

Born:

1859 - Jerome K. Jerome
English writer and humorist, best known for the travelogue Three Men in a Boat.

1890 - E.E. Smith
American food engineer and early science fiction author; known as the father of space opera.

1903 - Benjamin Spock
American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care went through eight editions and was a huge bestseller.

1931 - Martha Grimes
American author of detective fiction, particularly the Richard Jury series.

Died:

1963 - Van Wyck Brooks
2015 - Ruth Rendell

May 1

Born:

1848 - James Ford Rhodes
American industrialist and author whose History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for History.

1881 - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
French philosopher and priest most well known for his main work The Phenomenon of Man, and his involvement with the Piltdown Man hoax.

1917 - Elizabeth Marie Pope
American author, specializing in the Elizabethan age and a Newbery Honor recipient for her young adult novel The Perilous Guard.

1923 - Joseph Heller
American satirical novelist whose Catch-22 is a classic of war fiction.




Died:
1986 - Edgar Parin d'Aulaire
1998 - Eldridge Cleaver