1768 Anglo-Irish novelist Laurence Sterne, author of the 18th Century's sprawling, experimental novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, died in London at age 54.

1839 French writer Rene F.A. Sully-Prudhomme, the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, was born in Paris.

1842 French symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme, author L'Apres-midi d'un faune, was born in Paris.

1843 English author Robert Southey died in Keswick, Cumberland at age 68. Although he published much poetry, he is chiefly remembered for his excellent miscellaneous prose, as well as his close association with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. When they were young Southey convinced Coleridge to marry a woman he didn't love as part of a scheme to found a utopian society in America. Southey then abandoned the plan, leaving Coleridge to many years of unhappiness and opium.

1846 Acclaimed 19th Century children's book author and illustrator Kate Greenaway was born in London.

1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic The Scarlet Letter was published.

1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, was published in Cleveland. 3000 copies were sold the first day alone, and 300,000 copies were sold within the year. Sometimes credited as a cause of the Civil War, probably no other work of fiction has had so profound an impact on the course of history.

1868 British mystery writer Ernest Bramah, known for his blind detective Max Carrados and his tales following Kai Lung, a true life medieval Chinese detective, was born near Manchester.

1893 The poet Wilfred Owen was born in Shropshire, England. He was killed in battle during the First World War 25 years later.

1912 Hugh Callingham Wheeler, who with co-author Richard Wilson Webb wrote mysteries under the pseudonyms Q. Patrick, Patrick Quentin, and Jonathan Stagge, was born.

1920 Mystery author Lawrence Sanders was born in Brooklyn, NY. His first novel, The Anderson Tapes, was published fifty years later, but by his death he had written over forty books.

1921 British mystery author E.W. Hornung, brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle and creator of gentleman-thief A.J. Raffles, died in St. Jean de Luz, France at age 54.

1932 John Updike, whose "Rabbit" Angstrom series won two Pulitzer Prizes, was born in Shillington, PA.

1933 Philip Roth was born.

1933 British author Penelope Lively, known for both her works for children and her acclaimed novels for adults including The Road to Lichfield and the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, was born in Cairo, Egypt, where her father was a bank manager.

1936 English novelist John Fowles, author of The Collector and The French Lieutenant's Woman, was born in Leigh upon Sea, Essex.

1940 Selma Lagerlof, both the first woman and the first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, died in Marbacka, Sweden at age 81. Among her novels were Gosta Berlings saga and Jerusalem.

1947 American thriller writer James Patterson was born in Newburgh, NY.

1950 Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, died of a heart attack in Encino, CA at age 74.

1951 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk was published.

1953 James Baldwin's first book, the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, was published. Baldwin was dissatisfied with the cover art on the advance copies, and so artist John O'Hara Cosgrove, 2nd reworked his cover from Philip Goodman's 1942 book Franklin Street for Go Tell It on the Mountain.

1956 Novelist Louis Bromfield, author of The Green Bay Tree and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Early Autumn, died in Columbus, OH at age 59.

1959 American science-fiction author Edwin Balmer, best known for The Achievements of Luther Trent and When Worlds Collide (which he co-wrote with Philip Gordon Wylie), died in North Tarrytown, NY at age 73.

1986 American writer Bernard Malamud, whose novels included The Natural and The Fixer, died in New York City at age 71.

1996 Greek poet and Nobel laureate Odysseus Elytis died in Athens at age 84. Among his works were "Worthy It Is" and Heroic and Elegiac Song for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign, an anthem to the cause of freedom during WWII.

1997 British author V.S. Pritchett, known for his short story collections including You Make Your Own Life, Blind Love, and A Careless Widow, died in London at age 96.

2008 Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, best known for his collaboration with director Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, died at age 90 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he moved in 1956 and pursued his interest in undersea exploration.