Today is the birthday of the British essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle, born in Ecclefechan, Scotland (1795). Carlyle moved to London with his wife in 1834, and began work on an ambitious project about the French Revolution. He spent months of hard work on the book, living in poverty and devoting every resource to the project, but when he lent the manuscript to philosopher John Stuart Mill, Mill's maid accidentally threw it in the fire. The post The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, December 4, 2024 appeared first on Garrison Keillor ..read more

The Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot opened on Broadway on this date in 1960. It was an adaptation of The Once and Future King, T.H. White's retelling of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1958). The original cast recording — featuring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet — was a favorite of President Kennedy and his family. Not long after her husband's assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy gave an interview to T.H. White. She told him how her husband would often ask her to play the album at bedtime, to take his mind off his crippling back pain ..read more

It's the birthday of writer George Saunders, born in Amarillo, Texas (1958), the author of the books CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996), Pastoralia (2000), and In Persuasion Nation (2006). He contributes to magazines like The New Yorker, GQ,and McSweeney's, and has won the National Magazine Award for fiction four times in the past 16 years. The post The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, December 2, 2024 appeared first on Garrison Keillor ..read more

It was on this day in 1589 that the first part of Edmund Spenser's epic poem "The Faerie Queene" was registered for publication in London. Spenser was English, but he had written most of the poem in Ireland. The post The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, December 1, 2024 appeared first on Garrison Keillor ..read more

It's the birthday of the man who said, "A successful book is not made of what is in it, but of what is left out of it": Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens in Florida, Missouri (1835). In 1867, he published his first book, a book of short stories called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. It didn't sell many copies, but two years later, he published The Innocents Abroad (1869), a humorous book of travel writing. The post The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 30, 2024 appeared first on Garrison Keillor ..read more

Today is the birthday of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799), born in Wolcott, Connecticut, and also the birthday of his daughter, Louisa May Alcott (1832), born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The father was a transcendentalist philosopher, abolitionist, and teacher; the daughter was the author of many books, most notably Little Women (1868). The post The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 29, 2024 appeared first on Garrison Keillor ..read more

It's the birthday of poet William Blake, born in London (1757). He started seeing visions when he was a young boy — God in the window, angels in trees. He apprenticed to an engraver, and spent his life as a little-known printmaker and poet. In 1809, Blake opened an exhibition of his art on the first floor of his brother's hosiery shop. He called the show "Poetical and Historical Inventions." The post The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 28, 2024 appeared first on Garrison Keillor ..read more

It was on this day in 1786 that Scottish poet Robert Burns borrowed a pony and made his way from his home in Ayrshire to the city of Edinburgh. The fall of 1786 had been an eventful one for Burns. He wasn't making any money farming, and after he got his girlfriend Jean Armour pregnant, he decided he needed to find a way to support his new family — not to mention his illegitimate one-year-old daughter, whose mother was a servant in the Burns household and wanted money. Burns accepted a friend's offer to work as a clerk in Jamaica, and was set to leave in September. The post The W ..read more

It's the birthday of science writer Jonathan Weiner, born in New York City in 1953. His parents grew up poor in Brooklyn, but by the time Weiner was in high school, his physicist father moved the family to Providence, Rhode Island, to accept a position at Brown. It was in Providence that Weiner's love of biology developed, and he went off to Harvard determined to become a scientist. But it was there that his love of literature developed, and he graduated not with a degree in biology as planned, but in English. The post The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, November 26, 2024 app ..read more

It's the birthday of American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, born in Dunfermline, Scotland (1835), the son of a weaver and political radical. His father instilled in young Andrew the values of political and economic equality, but his family's poverty taught Carnegie a different lesson. At the age of 12, the boy worked as a milkhand for $1.20 per week. The post The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 25, 2024 appeared first on Garrison Keillor ..read more