Notes For November 5th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 5th, 1943, the famous American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor Sam Shepard was born. He was born Samuel Shepard Rogers IV in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. His parents were teachers.

After graduating from high school, Sam briefly attended college, then dropped out to join a traveling theater group. In 1963, he was working as a busboy in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

He delved into illicit drugs and for a time became a drummer for the eccentric folk-rock group The Holy Modal Rounders, which were featured in the classic movie, Easy Rider (1969). He avoided the draft for Vietnam by claiming to be a heroin addict.

Shepard returned to the theater, becoming involved with New York's off-Broadway theater scene. Although he acted occasionally, he was primarily interested in writing. His plays were staged at several different off-Broadway venues, mostly at the Theatre Genesis in the East Village.

Richard O'Brien, author and co-star of the musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which would be adapted in 1975 as one of the greatest cult classic films of all time, cited Shepard's 1969 science fiction play The Unseen Hand as an influence.

Though Shepard wrote for the stage, he also earned some impressive early screenwriting credits. He contributed to the screenplays for Robert Frank's indie classic Me And My Brother (1968) and Michelangelo Antonioni's classic film, Zabriskie Point (1970).

In the early 1970s, Sam Shepard lived in England for three years, then moved back to the United States, where he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and became playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre, which produced his works.

Some of his notable plays from this period include Geography Of A Horse Dreamer (1974), Suicide In B Flat (1976), and Angel City (1976).

Shepard's 1978 play, Buried Child, won him a Pulitzer Prize for drama the following year and brought him international fame. It was the first time that an off-Broadway play won a Pulitzer Prize.

Buried Child debunks the mythology of the American Dream in its tale of Dodge, the aged, failed patriarch of a dysfunctional Midwestern farm family.

A weak, sardonic alcoholic who is bullied by his wife and children, Dodge represents the archetypal American father's failure to create the environment of "family values" idealized by the American Dream.

Dodge's sons, Tilden and Bradley, are also failures. One is handicapped physically, the other emotionally. They are unable to take over the family farm or care for their parents in their old age.

Never able to make a success of his farm, the now elderly Dodge sits in his living room and decays, his immobility a metaphor for his disappointment and disillusionment. His wife Halie, now in her mid-60s, still worships her late third son Ansel, whom she sees as an All-American hero.

Ansel, a former star basketball player, was found dead in his motel room under suspicious circumstances. Other characters in the play include Reverend Dewis, the family minister - a married man who drinks and carouses with women and once had an affair with Halie.

A subplot finds Shelly, the girlfriend of Tilden's son Vince, (who hates being at his grandparents' house) uncovering the shocking family secret - Vince is the child of an incestuous union between his father and grandmother.

Although Sam Shepard's film career began as a contributing screenwriter, he would turn to acting, debuting as the wealthy farm owner in Terrence Malick's 1978 epic film, Days Of Heaven.

Shepard would follow his debut with a memorable co-starring role in the 1980 movie, Resurrection. It was about a woman, Edna McCauley (Ellen Burstyn), who survives the horrific car accident that kills her husband.

Paralyzed from the waist down, Edna discovers that she has gained the power to heal herself and others. Her new boyfriend Cal Carpenter, (Shepard) a young hellraiser, begins to think that Edna is the second coming of Christ.

Cal becomes a born again Christian. Edna fails to see what her survival and healing powers have to do with religion, and this disturbs Cal greatly. His mental state begins to deteriorate to the point that he becomes dangerously unbalanced, believing that Edna is the Antichrist - and must be destroyed.

In 1983, Sam Shepard co-starred as astronaut Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Although he had a fear of flying, he allowed the real Chuck Yeager to fly him high in preparation for the role.

Shepard appeared in memorable supporting roles in numerous films. He was the voice of the narrator in the 2006 live action feature film adaptation of E.B. White's classic children's novel, Charlotte's Web.

He also co-starred in the 2008 prison drama, Felon, which starred Stephen Dorff as a loving family man who finds himself sent to prison for killing a burglar who had broken into his home.

Shepard would return to screenwriting in 1984, co-writing the Wim Wenders film, Paris, Texas. The following year, he wrote and starred in an adaptation of his play, Fool For Love, directed by the great Robert Altman. In 2005, he co-wrote and starred in another Wim Wenders movie, Don't Come Knocking.

Shepard played an aging Western movie star disgusted with his decadent, meaningless life. So he flees the set of his latest film and hits the road on horseback in search of his past and the woman (Jessica Lange) he left behind twenty years ago.

Sam Shepard proved himself to be one of America's best modernist playwrights. He wrote over 45 plays, eleven of which won Obie Awards, and one the Pulitzer Prize. He also earned Tony Award nominations.

In 1986, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which in 1992 awarded him the Gold Medal for Drama. In 1994, he was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame. He taught drama for many years.

His classes in play writing and theater arts were held at various theater workshops, festivals, and universities. During the 1970s, he served as a professor at the University of California, Davis.

Sam Shepard died in 2017 at the age of 73, following a battle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. His final play, A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations), was written in 2014.

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Quote Of The Day

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"There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over."

- Sam Shepard

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features Sam Shepard reading from his work at Trinity College, Dublin, in 2012. Enjoy!

Notes For November 4th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 4th, 1948, the famous American poet and playwright T.S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize in literature. Born in St. Louis, he emigrated to England in 1914 at the age of 25. He later became a naturalized British subject.

Eliot is probably most famous today for his whimsical poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, (1939) which was adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber as the avant garde hit Broadway musical, Cats.

By the time he'd written that book, Eliot had already established himself as one of the most profound poets of his time. His classic poems The Waste Land (1922), Ariel Poems (1927-31), and Ash Wednesday (1930) were steeped deep in spirituality and philosophy.

Eliot's first major work, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, (1917) introduced his poetic style, which combined blank verse with long, fragmented images, a style that still influences poetic voice to this day.

Although some scholars consider The Waste Land to be Eliot's masterpiece, most believe that Four Quartets (1945) was his greatest work and what led him to win the Nobel Prize.

Four Quartets was a collection of four long poems (Burn Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding) inspired by Eliot's considerable knowledge of mysticism and philosophy.

T.S. Eliot's winning the Nobel Prize award came as quite a shock, as he was a controversial figure. A devout Anglican and staunch conservative, Eliot had voiced support for fascism and praised Italian dictator Benito Mussolini before the outbreak of World War II.

He had also been accused of anti-Semitism, an idea that is still hotly debated to this day. In a series of lectures he gave at the University of Virginia in 1933, which were published a year later as After Strange Gods, Eliot said:

What is still more important is unity of religious background, and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.

He would later disavow After Strange Gods and prevent any part of it from being reprinted.

Eliot was defended by his friends, poet Stephen Spender and writer Leonard Woolf, (the husband of Virginia Woolf) who were both Jewish. Woolf said that Eliot was "slightly anti-Semitic in the sort of vague way which is not uncommon. He would have denied it quite genuinely."

In 2003, Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University published the details of a previously unknown series of letters written by T.S. Eliot to Horace Kallen, a Jewish American philosopher.

The letters revealed that during World War II, Eliot helped German and Austrian Jewish refugees settle in England and the United States. In letters he wrote after the war, Eliot voiced support for Israel as a Jewish state.

Despite the controversy surrounding his personal and political beliefs, T.S. Eliot still remains a strong influence on modern poetic voice.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."

- T.S. Eliot

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of T.S. Eliot reading his classic epic poem, The Waste Land. Enjoy!

Notes For November 3rd, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On November 3rd, 1938, the legendary American playwright Terrence McNally was born. He was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, but grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas. In 1956, McNally moved to New York City.

He attended Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1960, earning a degree in English. During his last year at university, McNally became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, an academic honor society for outstanding students of the liberal arts and sciences.

After he graduated, Terrence McNally went to Mexico and began his career as a playwright. He wrote a one-act play which he submitted to the Actors Studio in New York City for production.

The Studio turned down McNally's play, but was impressed with his script and offered him a position as stage manager so he could gain experience in the theater. He moved back to New York and took the job.

While learning the ropes both working and writing for the theater, McNally became the protege and lover of legendary playwright Edward Albee. In 1968, McNally's first produced project made its debut. He had co-written the book for a musical called Here's Where I Belong.

Unfortunately, McNally was so disappointed in the final product that he asked for his name to be removed from the credits. It was a wise decision. The musical bombed and closed after one performance.

That same year, Terrence McNally wrote what would prove to be one of his early breakthrough plays. Sweet Eros opened off-Broadway at the Gramercy Arts Theatre in New York City on November 21st, 1968.

It was part of a double bill with Witness, another early McNally play. Sweet Eros was a 45-minute, one-act, two-character play about a disturbed young man with a history of failed relationships who kidnaps a young woman and brings her to his home in the country.

The play opens with the girl sitting in a chair, bound and gagged, while the young man sits opposite her. He explains his motive for the kidnapping, then methodically strips her naked, both body and soul.

After removing her clothing, he (presumably) rapes his victim, then subjects her to a series of rants and monologues about life and love. He wants to make the girl understand him, and ultimately, submit to him.

Sweet Eros caused a sensation when it opened, because the girl, played by Sally Kirkland, was nude on stage for almost the entire length of the play.

In 1969, McNally once again won critical praise with his timely comedy, Next. Also a one-act, two-character play, Next told the story of Marion Cheever, an overweight, middle-aged sad sack who is mistakenly drafted. He reports to Sgt. Thech, a tough female examining officer.

The two engage in a battle of wits, as Cheever is just as determined to avoid military service as Thech is to induct him. The play opened off-Broadway, on February 10th, 1969, at the Greenwich Mews Theatre.

It was part of a double bill with Adaptation, a play written by Elaine May, who directed both productions. James Coco and Elaine Shore co-starred in Next. Both plays ran for over 700 performances.

In the 1970s, McNally continued to win critical praise with two more comedies, Bad Habits (1974) and The Ritz (1975), which is my favorite McNally play. Bad Habits takes place during one day in a rehab center that caters to various "bad habits."

The play is focused on three particular patients: an alcoholic, a drag queen, and a perverted, sadistic deluded man. Dr. Toynbee is the head doctor at the center.

Described as a saint and revered by everyone, the doctor has developed a serum that can supposedly cure his patients' bad habits, but it only lasts momentarily and doesn't cure anything... or does it?

The Ritz was a landmark gay-themed play that managed to be both poignant and screamingly funny. Gaetano Proclo is a meek, straight businessman from Cleveland on the run from his brother-in-law, murderous mob boss Carmine Vespucci.

Proclo flees to New York City, where he hides out at a Manhattan bathhouse, (The Ritz) not realizing that it's a gay bathhouse. He suspects that something is not quite right as he meets the oddball characters there.

They include a fat fetishist, go-go boys, and a squeaky-voiced detective. Performing at the establishment is Googie Gomez, a third-rate Puerto Rican lounge singer with Broadway aspirations and a fiery Latin temper.

When Proclo realizes that he's staying at a gay bathhouse, he's horrified at first, but soon comes to accept his gay housemates. Then his wife tracks him down and jumps to the wrong conclusion about his sexuality, and Carmine finds him, too!

The Ritz opened on Broadway on January 20th, 1975, at the Longacre Theatre, and ran for 398 performances. Original cast mates Jack Weston, Rita Moreno, Jerry Stiller, F. Murray Abraham, Stephen Collins, and George Dzundza would reprise their roles a year later in an acclaimed feature film adaptation of the play, which was directed by Richard Lester.

In the 1980s, Terrence McNally would establish himself as one of America's greatest contemporary playwrights with his classic play, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. The two-character play was about two lonely people - a middle-aged man (Johnny) and woman (Frankie) - who end up in bed after their first date.

Johnny believes that he's found a soul mate in Frankie, but she's not so sure about him. As the night progresses, Frankie and Johnny slowly reveal themselves to each other, baring their souls as they take tentative steps toward the beginning of a relationship.

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune opened off-Broadway on June 2nd, 1987, at the Manhattan Theatre Club, directed by Paul Benedict (best known as Harry Bentley, the daffy British neighbor of the Jeffersons) and starring Kathy Bates and Kenneth Welsh in the lead roles.

In 1991, the play was adapted as an acclaimed feature film called Frankie and Johnny, starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, who beat out Kathy Bates for the role of Frankie. McNally wrote the screenplay, but the movie differs greatly from the play on which it was based.

McNally would return to musical theater in 1984, writing the book for a musical called The Rink. He would also write the books for hit musicals such as Kiss Of The Spider Woman (1992), Ragtime (1996), and The Full Monty (2000).

In 1990, McNally ventured to a new medium - television, writing the teleplay for a TV movie called Andre's Mother. The acclaimed telefilm was written as an episode of PBS's American Playhouse series. The gay-themed drama is about a woman, Katherine, who is unable to come to terms with the death of her son Andre from AIDS.

So, she directs her rage at his partner, Cal, (she never accepted her son's homosexuality) her own mother, (who did accept her grandson as gay) and even Andre himself. Andre's Mother won McNally an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie, or a Dramatic Special.

Andre's Mother would be followed by a sequel, Mothers and Sons. Twenty years after losing her son Andre to AIDS, Katherine visits his lover Cal, who is now married to his new partner, Will, in an attempt at reconciliation.

In 1994, McNally wrote another hit gay-themed off-Broadway play, Love! Valour! Compassion! The comedy-drama was about eight gay friends who meet at a lakeside summer vacation home in upstate New York to celebrate the Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day holidays.

The house is owned by Gregory, a middle-aged choreographer who fears that his creative talent is drying up, and his younger lover Bobby, a legal assistant who is blind.

During their holidays, Gregory, Bobby, and their friends deal with flirtations, infidelity, AIDS, truth telling, and soul searching. The play also includes a dress rehearsal for a wacky production of Swan Lake - performed in drag!

Love! Valour! Compassion! would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1997, with McNally adapting his own play for the screen.

In 1998, McNally wrote his most controversial gay-themed play. Corpus Christi is a brilliant and scathing satire of the Passion play, with Jesus and his disciples depicted as gay men living in Texas.

Mixing elements of ancient times (a Roman occupation) and modern times, (television) the play satirizes religious persecution of gay people. Corpus Christi was scheduled to open off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club, but the Club's board of directors canceled it.

Death threats had been made by Christian groups against the board members. Their decision to cancel the production angered other playwrights, including Tony Kushner, who threatened to withdraw their own plays from the Club if Corpus Christi was banned.

The board members relented, and the show went on. The play contained scenes that raised the ire of right wing Christians and other conservative religious groups; in one scene, Jesus officiates at a gay wedding between two of his disciples.

In another scene, he is betrayed by Judas, whose betrayal is the act of a jealous lover. On opening night, the Theatre Club was besieged by two thousand protesters. When Corpus Christi opened in London, a Muslim group, Defenders of the Messenger Jesus, issued a fatwa sentencing McNally to death for blasphemy.

With his brilliant, challenging plays, Terrence McNally proved himself to be one of America's greatest contemporary playwrights. His final play, Fire and Air, was written in 2018. He died two years later from Covid complications at the age of 81.

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Quote Of The Day

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“I don't think I've ever written anything even remotely naturalistic. The closest probably would be seen as Frankie and Johnny, and that's only 'cause they eat a sandwich and make an omelet in act two. But it's a romantic fairy tale, and I'm very aware of that. I don't think it helps the actors in my plays to lose themselves in the reality of talking to another person. A good McNally actor always knows he's in a play with an audience.”

- Terrence McNally

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a documentary on Terrence McNally's most controversial play, Corpus Christi. Enjoy!

Notes For October 30th, 2026

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Happy Halloween!

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I'd like to wish all of you who celebrate it a happy and safe Halloween. As part of your celebration, I recommend reading the classic horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Washington Irving, and Guy de Maupassant!

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 30th, 1938, the Mercury Theater radio program, famous for its radio play adaptations of classic literature, broadcast a production of War Of The Worlds, an adaptation of the classic science fiction novel by the legendary English writer H.G. Wells.

The radio play was written by and starred the legendary actor, filmmaker, and writer Orson Welles, who had co-founded the Mercury Theater company with actor / director John Houseman.

Welles was only 23 years old at the time of the broadcast, yet he had already established himself as a renowned stage and radio actor, having starred as the voice of the Shadow on that popular suspense series.

The Mercury Theater program aired on Sunday nights at 8PM. Many people would tune in around 8:12PM after the comedy sketch on the Chase & Sanborn Hour variety show (starring legendary ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy) had ended and a singer filled out the remaining time.

Had these late comers tuned in at the beginning of this particular episode of Mercury Theater, they would have known that what they were listening to was Orson Welles' adaptation of War Of The Worlds.

Instead, they thought they were listening to a real newscast describing an actual Martian invasion of Earth! That's because the radio play was presented in the format of a mock news broadcast.

It began with an announcer reading a weather report, then taking listeners to "the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra."

After a few minutes of dreadful dance music, an announcer broke in with a news bulletin: a scientist, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory, had detected explosions on Mars.

The lame dance music returned, then an announcer broke in again to report that a large meteor had crashed into a farm in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. Soon, an on-the-spot reporter at the crash site begins describing a space alien emerging from a large metallic cylinder:

Good heavens! Something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here's another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me... I can see the thing's body now. It's large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it... it... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate...

The Martians initiate a massive attack, wiping out 7,000 National Guardsmen and lobbing canisters of poison gas across America. The incredibly realistic radio play featured sophisticated sound effects and a first rate cast of actors portraying announcers and other terrified characters.

When one announcer character reported that widespread panic had broken out at the crash sites, with thousands of people trying to flee, it wasn't far from the truth: a minor panic broke out across the country, as perhaps a million people believed that Martians really had attacked Earth!

The total population of the United States in 1938 was approximately 130,000,000 people, so it wasn't the mass panic of legend that some believe, but a lot of people were frightened by the broadcast.

In New Jersey, people fleeing in terror caused huge traffic jams on the highways. Others begged police for gas masks to protect them from the Martians' poison gas and pleaded with electric companies to shut off the power so that the Martians couldn't see people's lights.

In Indianapolis, a terrified woman ran into a church during evening services, screaming that New York had been destroyed and warning the congregation that the end of the world had come. News of the panic reached CBS studio bosses, who also panicked.

Orson Welles then broke character to remind people that they were listening to a radio play. After the broadcast, the Federal Communications Commission investigated the Mercury Theater program and concluded that no laws had been broken.

Radio networks promised to be more cautious with their programming in the future. Nevertheless, people were furious that the War Of The Worlds broadcast caused so much unnecessary duress.

Most believed that the broadcast was a Halloween prank played on listeners by Welles and his cast mates. It wasn't, but Welles gave them the impression that it was in his snarky on-air apology:

This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theater's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying boo. Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night... so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the Columbia Broadcasting System.

You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember please, for the next day or so, the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian. It's Halloween.

Despite Welles's apology, many still believed that the notorious War Of The Worlds broadcast was indeed a mean spirited practical joke aimed at a nervous American public weary from the Great Depression and wary of the looming threat of Hitler and another world war.

Orson Welles feared that his career had been ruined by the controversy, but just the opposite happened. The publicity helped him land a lucrative movie contract with RKO Pictures, for whom he would write, direct, and star in what many (including me) consider to be the greatest film ever made - Citizen Kane (1941).

To this day, the 1938 War Of The Worlds broadcast is rightfully considered an Old Time Radio (OTR) classic and is a treasured favorite of OTR enthusiasts like myself.

The famous radio broadcast would be recreated many times and inspire tribute productions such as the 1994 TV movie, Without Warning. The movie aired on the CBS network as both a Halloween special and a tribute to the Welles radio broadcast.

Taking the form of a mock newscast, the movie told the story of an extraterrestrial contact misinterpreted by the paranoid military, who attacks them. The unseen aliens then attempt to wipe out the human race - and succeed.

Like Orson Welles's famous radio play, the film included disclaimers before and after the commercial breaks stating that it was just a movie. Still, CBS and its affiliate stations were flooded with phone calls from frightened viewers wondering if the film's mock newscast was real.

The other TV networks - ABC, NBC, and Fox - were also flooded with calls asking why they weren't covering the same important story as CBS. The CBS network was later condemned as irresponsible for broadcasting the film on Halloween night.

Like the listeners who tuned in late to Orson Welles's famous radio broadcast, many adult TV viewers who tuned in late to Without Warning because of trick-or-treating or Halloween parties were not sure what they were seeing. Real CBS News graphics were used for the film's mock newscast.

No TV network has attempted a similar Halloween night broadcast since then. Two years before CBS aired Without Warning, the BBC broadcast Ghostwatch, a mock BBC TV reality program supposedly broadcast live from a haunted house and hosted by the legendary British TV journalist Sir Michael Parkinson in the BBC studio.

Many terrified viewers thought it was real, including an 18-year-old developmentally disabled man who then committed suicide, believing that the demonic entity in the film had come into his home, as seen in the film, which ended with the studio possessed and the entity escaping through the live TV cameras into people's homes.

The broadcast also caused some children to suffer post traumatic stress. So great was the uproar it caused that Ghostwatch was never rebroadcast and went unseen for many years until it was finally released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and streaming services.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."

- Orson Welles

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the complete 1938 Mercury Theater broadcast of War Of The Worlds. Enjoy!

Notes For October 29th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 29th, 1740, the famous Scottish writer James Boswell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Alexander Boswell, was a judge and the 8th Laird of Auchinleck. His mother, Euphemia, was a strict Calvinist.

As a child, James Boswell was delicate and sickly. He suffered from an inherent nervous ailment. At the age of five, Boswell was sent to the James Mundell Academy, which was an advanced school for its time; students were taught English, Latin, writing, and mathematics.

Boswell was unhappy living at the school, and his nervous ailment manifested itself in forms such as extreme shyness and night terrors. Finally, three years later, at the age of eight, he was removed from the Academy and taught by private tutors who awakened his passion for literature.

When he was thirteen, Boswell enrolled in the arts program at the University of Edinburgh. He studied there for five years, then suffered a bout of severe depression and nervous illness. When he recovered, he had finally lost his childhood delicacy and gained good health.

Boswell continued his studies at the University of Glasgow, where he was taught by the legendary writer and philosopher Adam Smith, who became famous for his treatise on economics, The Wealth Of Nations (1776).

While at Glasgow, Boswell decided to convert to Catholicism and become a monk, which prompted his irate father to demand that he return home. Instead, Boswell ran away to London, where for three months, he lived the unrestrained life of a libertine until his father came to bring him back to Scotland.

When he returned to Edinburgh, Boswell re-enrolled at university to finish his education. On July 30th, 1762, he took his oral law exam, which he passed easily. The following year, he met Samuel Johnson for the first time, and they became close friends.

Johnson was a legendary English writer, literary critic, scholar, and lexicographer (he wrote a dictionary of the English language that was the standard for many years) who has been rightfully described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history." He called Boswell "Bozzy."

Three months after he met Johnson, Boswell left for the Netherlands, where he planned to continue his law studies at Utrecht University. Although deeply unhappy at first, Boswell came to enjoy his time in Utrecht greatly.

He met and fell in love with an eccentric, vivacious young Dutchwoman named Belle van Zuiylen, who proved to be his social and intellectual superior. She wouldn't marry him, so Boswell left Utrecht and traveled around Europe for two years, where he met legendary French writers and philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

He also met one of his heroes, the Italian independence leader Pasquale Paoli. The diaries that Boswell kept during his time in Utrecht and his travels through Europe would later be published as Boswell In Holland (1763-64) and Boswell On The Grand Tour (1764-66).

In 1766, Boswell returned to Scotland, where he took his final law exam, passed it, and became a practicing advocate for over a decade. Once a year, he would go to London to see his friend Samuel Johnson and hobnob with London's literati. His journals and letters from this time chronicled his libertine exploits.

In a 1767 letter to W.J. Temple, Boswell wrote:

I got myself quite intoxicated, went to a Bawdy-house and past a whole night in the arms of a whore. She indeed was a fine strong spirited girl, a whore worthy of Boswell if Boswell must have a whore.

Earlier, Boswell had written of a one night stand he had with an actress named Louisa. Though he occasionally used a condom for protection, Boswell would contract venereal disease at least seventeen times.

In November of 1769, Boswell married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. She bore him seven children, two of whom died in infancy. He also had at least two illegitimate children who died in infancy. Despite his frequent visits to brothels, Margaret remained with him for twenty years, until she died of tuberculosis in 1789.

Boswell achieved moderate literary success with the publication of his travel journals, but was unsuccessful as an advocate. By the late 1770s, he had plunged into a quagmire of alcoholism and gambling addiction, and also suffered from severe mood swings, most likely the result of bipolar disorder.

After his old friend Samuel Johnson died in 1784, Boswell moved to London to try his hand at the English Bar, but was even less successful than he was as an advocate in Scotland. So, he spent most of his last years writing a biography of Johnson, which was published in 1791.

It was a masterpiece, considered to be the greatest biography ever written. Unlike most biographies of the time, which just provided the dry details of the subject's public life, Boswell's biography of Johnson was revolutionary.

The book included far more personal information than readers of the time were accustomed to, providing them with not only a record of Johnson's public life and works, but also a vivid personal account of Johnson the man. Boswell even included transcripts of conversations he'd had with Johnson.

The longevity of Samuel Johnson's fame owes itself mostly to James Boswell's biography. With the publication of The Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell finally received the literary recognition he'd sought for so long. It remains a classic to this day.

After the book was published, Boswell's health began to deteriorate from the ravages of alcoholism and venereal disease. He died on May 19th, 1795, at the age of 54.

Over 120 years after his death, a large collection of his papers, including intimate journals he'd kept throughout his life, were discovered at Malahide Castle, North of Dublin. They were sold to an American collector and later passed on to Yale University, which published them.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."

- James Boswell

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a BBC documentary on James Boswell. Enjoy!

Notes For October 28th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 28th, 1905, Mrs. Warren's Profession, the classic play by the legendary Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, opened at the Garrick Theater in New York. The play, Shaw's second, was written in 1893.

Banned in Britain by the Lord Chamberlain (England's theater censor) because of its frank depiction of prostitution, the play would finally open in London on January 5th, 1902, behind closed doors at the New Lyric Club - a private, members-only organization.

Private theatrical clubs were exempt from the censorship laws regulating public theaters in England. The play couldn't be legally performed in a British public theater until 1926, when theatrical censorship was less strict.

Mrs. Warren's Profession centers on the relationship between Mrs. Warren, a middle-aged ex-prostitute turned brothel madam, and her prudish, conservative, Cambridge-educated daughter, Vivie.

Mrs. Warren has always hidden the truth about her profession from her daughter. When Vivie discovers that her mother's fortune was really made in the brothel business, she's horrified.

Eventually, the two strong willed women reconcile when Mrs. Warren explains that her childhood, spent in grinding poverty and despair, led her to become a prostitute because it was the only way to support herself. Vivie forgives her - until she finds out that her mother is still running brothels.

Though the play was inspired by Yvette, a novel by the legendary French writer Guy de Maupassant, George Bernard Shaw, a staunch socialist, said that he wrote Mrs. Warren's Profession for this reason:

To draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused not by female depravity and male licentiousness but simply by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together.

After opening in New York, Mrs. Warren's Profession would close after only one performance, as the play was promptly shut down by puritanical authorities.

A few days later, on October 31st, the producer and the entire cast of actors were arrested for obscenity. Fortunately, they were all acquitted in court - including George Bernard Shaw, who was tried in absentia.

Shaw would go on to write many more classic plays, including Candida (1894), Caesar And Cleopatra (1898), Major Barbara (1905), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), Fanny's First Play (1911), and Pygmalion (1912), upon which the hit Broadway musical My Fair Lady was based.

In all of his works, Shaw extolled the virtues of socialism and denounced all forms of capitalist exploitation, including the degradation of women. He also drew attention to the effects of poverty, violence, and war on both society and the individual.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete live performance of Mrs. Warren's Profession. Enjoy!

Notes For October 27th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 27th, 1932, the legendary American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto Plath, a German immigrant, was a professor of biology and German at Boston University.

Her mother, Aurelia, was the daughter of Austrian immigrants. She was 21 years younger than Sylvia's father when she married him. When Sylvia Plath was four years old, the family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her childhood.

Otto Plath died of complications from diabetes when she was eight years old. The loss devastated his daughter and would affect Sylvia the rest of her life.

Her most famous poem, Daddy, reflects her grief over her father's death and her anger at him for leaving her. Plath's readers still visit her father's gravestone at Winthrop Cemetery.

The same year that she lost her father, the eight-year-old Sylvia Plath had her first poem published in the children's section of the Boston Herald. In addition to her writing talent, she also displayed artistic talent.

When she was 15 years old, her paintings won an award from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She began keeping a diary at the age of eleven and kept journaling up until her death.

Sylvia Plath attended Smith College in Massachusetts. During her junior year, she was awarded a position as guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine. She spent a month in New York City working for the magazine.

She hoped it would be a great experience, but instead, it marked the beginning of a downward spiral in her life and resulted in her first documented suicide attempt - she crawled under her house and took an overdose of sleeping pills.

She was briefly committed to a mental institution where she received electroshock therapy. All of these experiences would be used as the basis for her only novel, The Bell Jar.

After recovering from her first bout with mental illness, Sylvia graduated with honors from Smith College. She won a Fulbright scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. There, she continued writing poetry, and her work was occasionally published in the student newspaper, Varsity.

At a party at Cambridge, Sylvia met English poet and children's book writer Ted Hughes. After a brief courtship, they were married on June 16th, 1956. They spent the next couple of years living and working in the U.S., where Sylvia taught at her alma mater, Smith College.

When Sylvia found herself pregnant with their first child, Frieda, she and Ted returned to London. There, in 1960, her first poetry collection, The Colossus and Other Poems, was published.

Some of the poems contained in it had been previously submitted to magazines and rejected because the editors found them to be too strange and disturbing.

The year after her first poetry book was published, Sylvia, then pregnant with her second child, suffered a miscarriage. In 1962, she became pregnant again and gave birth to a son, Nicholas.

The birth of their second child did nothing to help Sylvia and Ted's already troubled marriage. News of her husband's affair devastated Sylvia, and Plath scholars believe that Ted was also physically abusive to her throughout their marriage, though Hughes' admirers dispute that. The couple separated in late 1962.

In 1963, Sylvia's first and only novel, The Bell Jar, was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The semi-autobiographical novel, based in part on Sylvia Plath's first struggle with mental illness, is considered a masterpiece.

The novel, which I read as a teenager and loved, was adapted as a feature film in 1979. A month after The Bell Jar was published, Sylvia Plath committed suicide at the age of 30.

She sealed herself in her kitchen, plunged her head into the oven, and turned on the gas. Family, friends, and scholars believe that Sylvia's suicide was the result of a combination of factors.

She suffered from mental illness (most likely bipolar disorder), she was devastated by her father's death and her own miscarriage, and she suffered at the hands of an unfaithful and physically abusive husband she still loved.

Six years after Sylvia's death, her husband's mistress, Assia Wevill, committed suicide herself - the same way that Sylvia did - after murdering her daughter.

Sylvia's son, Nicholas Hughes, a biologist, would commit suicide later at the age of 47 after suffering from depression. Her daughter, Frieda Hughes, would go on to become a poet, painter, and children's book writer.

As the result of Sylvia Plath's untimely suicide in 1963, her second poetry collection, Ariel, which featured her most famous poems, (Daddy, Lady Lazarus, and Tulips) was published posthumously in 1965.

More poetry collections, prose works, and four children's books would also be published posthumously.

In 1981, a complete collection of Sylvia Plath's poetry, The Collected Poems, would be published. It won her a Pulitzer Prize the following year. Sylvia became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously.

Sylvia's husband, Ted Hughes, spent the last years of his life preparing an unabridged version of her journals for publication. They were first published in an abridged version in 1980.

Hughes faced criticism for the way he handled Sylvia's journals; he claimed to have destroyed her last journal "because I did not want her children to have read it."

He was also accused of trying to cash in on his wife's death, though the proceeds from all of her posthumous publications were placed in a trust fund for her children.

In 2000, Anchor Books published The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, which writer Joyce Carol Oates called a "genuine literary event." To this day, Sylvia Plath remains a major influence on American poetic voice.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

- Sylvia Plath

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a rare recording of Sylvia Plath reading a collection of her poems in 1958. Enjoy!