1886 Mystery author Rex Stout was born in Noblesville, IN. He is best known for his fictional sleuth, the reclusive gourmand Nero Wolfe, who appeared in Fer-de-Lance and 45 additional works.

1894 Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson died in Vailima, Samoa at age 44 of a stroke. He initially studied law, but instead achieved success in a variety of writing formats, and is still popular today for his poetry (A Child's Garden of Verses), his adventure novels (Treasure Island and Kidnapped), and his psychological horror classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

1895 English novelist Henry Williamson was born in Bedfordshire. Among his many works were the four novel cycle The Flax of Dreams, the 15 novel series A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, and probably his best known book, Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize.

1896 Satirical novelist Dawn Powell, author of A Time to Be Born and The Locusts Have No King, was born in Mount Gilead, OH.

1897 Australian novelist Helen Simpson was born in Sydney. She wrote in a wide variety of genres and two of her novels were adapted into films by Alfred Hitchcock.

1898 British author C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland. He is known to a wide variety of readers for his witty Christian apologetics (such as The Screwtape Letters), his science-fiction allegories (beginning with Out of the Silent Planet), and his enduring children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.

1900 Irish poet, dramatist, and wit Oscar Wilde, author of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray, died in Paris at age 46 of cerebral meningitis, having never fully recovered from his two years of imprisonment and hard labor for "gross indecency." During his final days he claimed, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."

1903 Prolific mystery author Cornell Woolrich, sometimes called the Poe of the 20th Century, was born in New York City.

1906 Mystery writer John Dickson Carr, who also wrote as Carter Dickson, was born in Uniontown, PA. In addition to works such as his highly regarded first novel, It Walks by Night and the Queen's Quorum title The Department of Queer Complaints, he also co-wrote several Sherlock Holmes novels with the youngest son of Arthur Conan Doyle.

1925 Polish author and Nobel laureate Wladyslaw Reymont, best known for his four volume novel The Peasants, died in Warsaw at age 58.

1931 American poet Vachel Lindsay, best known for "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" and "The Congo," committed suicide (by drinking Lysol) in his hometown Springfield, IL at age 52.

1934 Southern writer Willie Morris, author of North Toward Home and My Dog Skip, was born in Jackson, MS.

1934 American novelist and essayist Joan Didion, whose works include Slouching Toward Bethlehem, The White Album, and A Book of Common Prayer, was born in Sacramento, CA. Her husband was the novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne.

1935 Comic writer and filmmaker Woody Allen, whose books include Play It Again, Sam, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, was born in New York City.

1945 British journalist, mystery writer, and art historian Arthur Morrison died in Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire at age 82. He is best remembered for his atmospheric and reform-inspiring tales of the London slums including A Child of the Jago, his fictional private detective Martin Hewitt, and his monumental reference work The Painters of Japan.

1948 American writer T. Coraghessan Boyle, author of Descent of Man, The Road to Wellville, and the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning World's End, was born in Peekskill, NY.

1949 Playwright Philip Barry, best known for The Philadelphia Story, died in New York City at the age of 53.

1960 African-American novelist and essayist Richard Wright, author of Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, and Black Boy, died at age 52 in Paris, where he had made his home since the 1940s.

1963 American novelist Ann Patchett, author of The Patron Saint of Liars, The Magician's Assistant, and Bel Canto, was born in Los Angeles, CA.

1987 American writer James Baldwin, author of novels such as Go Tell it on the Mountain, essays such as Notes of a Native Son, and plays such as Blues for Mister Charlie, died in Saint-Paul, France, of stomach cancer at age 63.

1991 Popular African-American author Frank Yerby, died in Madrid, Spain at age 75. Among his best known novels were The Foxes of the Harrow and The Man from Dahomey.

1993 Novelist Margaret Landon, whose 1944 novel of the life of Anna Leonowens, Anna and the King of Siam, which was adapted for stage and screen as The King and I, died in Alexandria, VA at age 90. Landon herself lived in Thailand for a decade and first learned about Leonowens during that time.

2000 The poet Gwendolyn Brooks, whose book Annie Allen won the Pulitzer Prize, died in Chicago, IL at the age of 83.