1830 French poet Frederic Mistral, who led the 19th Century revival of the Provencal language and literature and was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Maillane.

1837 Joaquin Miller, the self-proclaimed "Poet of the Sierras," and author of "Columbus" (for those of you who remember the refrain "On, sail on!" from school), was born near Liberty, IN (some sources cite November 10, 1841 as his birth date).

1848 Adalbert Goldscheider, who under the name Balduin Groller invented the great fictional Austrian detective Dagobert Trostler, was born in Hungary.

1869 Austrian novelist and journalist Felix Salten, author of Bambi, was born in Budapest, Hungary.

1873 French playwright Alfred Jarry, author of the satirical farce Ubu Roi, was born in Laval, Mayenne.

1886 English poet and novelist Siegfried Sassoon, known for such antiwar works as The Old Huntsman and Counterattack, was born in Brenchley, Kent. He became widely known in part for his public affirmation of pacificism while he was still in the army and after having won the Military Cross. His antiwar protests were at first attributed to shell shock and he was for a time confined in a sanitorium (where he met another pacifist soldier-poet, Wilfred Owen, whose works he published after Owen's death at the front).

1887 English poet Elizabeth Sitwell, older sister of authors Osbert Sitwell and Sacheverell Sitwell, was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire.

1892 Author and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, known for his writing of rural New England life in works such as the poem "Snow-Bound," died in Hampton Falls, MA at age 84.

1896 British mystery novelist Richard Hull, author of The Murder of My Aunt, was born.

1898 French symbolist poet Stephane Mallarme, author of L'Apres-midi d'un faune, died in Paris at age 56 of cancer of the larynx.

1900 English novelist James Hilton, author of Lost Horizon and Good-bye, Mr. Chips, was born in Leigh, Lancashire.

1900 Prolific and popular Anglo-American novelist Taylor Caldwell was born in Manchester, England. The first of her many bestsellers was the 1938 novel Dynasty of Death.

1902 Historian and novelist Edward Eggleston, remembered for his "Hoosier" tales, died in Lake George, NY at age 64.

1903 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, was born in Somers, WI. Landon herself lived in Thailand for a decade and first learned about Leonowens during that time.

1905 British novelist, journalist, and critic Arthur Koestler, best known for the novel Darkness at Noon, was born in Budapest, Hungary.

1905 Mary Renault, known for her sequence of historical/mythological novels including The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea, was born in London. She spent most of her life in South Africa.

1907 Rene-Francois-Armand Sully-Prudhomme, the first Nobel Prize winner for Literature, died in Chatenay-Malabry, France at age 68.

1908 African-American novelist and essayist Richard Wright, author of Uncle Tom's Children, Native Son, and Black Boy, was born near Natchez, MS.

1916 Spanish dramatist and Nobel laureate Jose Echegaray died in his home city of Madrid at age 84.

1916 Popular African-American author Frank Yerby, was born in Augusta, GA. Among his best known novels were The Foxes of the Harrow and The Man from Dahomey.

1922 George R. Sims, English playwright and creator of detecive Dorcas Dene, died two days after his 75th birthday.

1924 Grace Metalious, who shot to fame with Peyton Place, her blockbuster of the seamy side of a small New England town, was born in Manchester, NH.

1928 Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was born in Minneapolis, MN.

1941 Maurice Leblanc creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsene Lupin, died in Perpignan, France a week before turning 77.

1947 Novelist and short-story writer Ann Beattie was born in Washington, DC. She has a cameo as a waitress in the film version of her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter.

1951 William Styron's first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, was published.

1952 Ernest Hemingway's late career, short masterpiece The Old Man and the Sea was published.

1957 Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the quintessential Beat novel, was published.

1962 Author Isak Dinesen, aka the Baroness Karen Blixen, died in Rungsted, Denmark at age 77. She essentially starved to death after a third of her stomach was removed due to an ulcer. Among her best known works are Babette's Feast, Seven Gothic Tales, and her memoir of her years running a coffee plantation in Kenya, Out of Africa.

1977 Charles Leslie McFarlane, a Canadian journalist who wrote 19 of the first 25 Hardy Boys books for Edward Stratemeyer's Stratemeyer Syndicate, died in Whitby, Ontario at age 74. The series was published under the Syndicate pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.

1984 Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty, best known for his novel The Informer, died in Dublin at age 88.

1989 Prolific Belgian mystery author Georges Simenon died in Lausanne, Switzerland at age 85. He had published over 200 books under pseudonyms before he introduced his well-known Inspector Maigret in The Case of Peter the Lett, the first book published under his own name.

1997 P.H. Newby, whose Something to Answer For won the first Booker Prize in 1969, died.

2002 British novelist William Cooper died at age 92. He wrote four books as H.S. Hoff (his birth name) before his 1950 novel Scenes from Provincial Life (published under the Cooper pseudonym), the first of five Scenes books to follow the character Joe Lunn.