Notes For October 16th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 16th, 1854, the legendary Irish writer Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a prominent ear and eye surgeon who wrote books on medicine, archaeology, and Irish folklore.

Wilde's mother, Jane, wrote poetry for the Young Irelanders revolutionary movement and was a lifelong Irish nationalist. As a boy, Oscar Wilde was home schooled until the age of nine, when he attended Portora Royal School in County Fermanagh.

After graduating from Portora, Wilde enrolled at Trinity College, Dublin, where he roomed with his brother Willie and became an outstanding student, winning the Berkley Gold Medal - the highest award a classics student could win at Trinity. He also won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford.

While studying at Magdalen, Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna, but he failed to win the Chancellor's English Essay Prize. However, the essay he entered, The Rise Of Historical Criticism, would be published posthumously in 1909.

Wilde graduated from Trinity with a double first (the UK equivalent of two 4.0 grade point averages) in classical moderations and literae humaniores. During his years at Magdalen, Oscar Wilde was involved with the aesthetic and decadent movements in Victorian art and literature.

He wore his hair long, openly expressed his disdain for "manly" sports, and decorated his room with objets d'art such as peacock feathers, sunflowers, and blue china. As a result, Wilde was greatly disliked by his fellow students.

They bullied him viciously, throwing their crockery at him and trashing his room. It was during this difficult time that Wilde first became a Freemason. He rose to the rank of Master Mason, which he retained until his death.

After he graduated from Magdalen, Wilde returned to Dublin. He met a woman, Florence Balcombe, and courted her, but she ended up marrying the legendary writer Bram Stoker. After hearing of their engagement, Wilde was heartbroken.

He wrote to Florence and told her that he was going to leave Ireland permanently. He would return just twice, for brief visits. After he left Ireland, he spent the next six years in London, Paris, and the U.S.

In London, Wilde met Constance Lloyd, whose father, Horace, was Queen's Counsel. Wilde married Constance in May of 1884. They had two sons. Although a married father of two, Wilde was bisexual and preferred men.

Biographer Neil McKenna theorized that Wilde became aware of his homosexuality at sixteen, experiencing his first kiss with another boy. For a time, unhappy with his sexual orientation, he sought out female companionship, hoping that marriage would "cure" him. It didn't.

Wilde subsequently developed an interest in gay philosophy and law reform, as homosexuality was not only held in great contempt by Victorian society, it was also illegal under British law - a crime punishable by imprisonment.

So, Wilde and some like-minded individuals formed a secret society called the Order of Chaeronea, which was dedicated to gay activism. In the summer of 1891, Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas, a young undergraduate student and poet known as Bosie to his friends.

His father, John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, was a brutal, hateful man who abhorred his son. He believed that the boy had been corrupted beyond repair by older homosexuals.

Bosie, who would become famous for his poem Two Loves, wherein he described homosexuality as "the love that dare not speak its name," was first Wilde's close friend, then his lover. They lived together openly in various places. Their relationship would lead to Wilde's downfall.

As a writer, Wilde was best known for his comic plays, which he infused with his famous, rapacious wit. His only novel was a masterpiece of Gothic horror called The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1890). Dorian Gray, a handsome young man, models for a painting by artist Basil Hallward.

Hallward becomes smitten with him and believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for a new phase in his art. He introduces Dorian to his friend, Lord Henry Watton, a hedonistic aristocrat whose philosophy enthralls Dorian.

Fearing that his beauty will fade with age, Dorian proclaims that he would sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth. Then something strange happens. While Dorian stays young and handsome, his portrait ages.

Over the next eighteen years, he embarks on a path of indulgence and debauchery, experimenting with every known vice and sin. When Basil Hallward arrives to question him about the rumors of his debauchery, Dorian shows him the portrait.

Dorian's painted likeness has become an aged, grotesque reflection of his sins. Blaming the artist for his fate, Dorian stabs Hallward to death. Shocked by what he's done, Dorian decides to give up his sinful ways.

He begins by not breaking the heart of a vicar's daughter whom he has come to love. Back at home, Dorian wonders if his portrait has changed, now that he has chosen to be good. Instead, it has become more hideous than ever, and he knows why - his change of heart was just another form of vanity and not genuine repentance.

Realizing that only a full confession will absolve him, but lacking the courage to confess to the killing of Hallward and fearing the consequences of doing so, Dorian is left with only one option.

In a rage, he plunges a knife into his portrait. Hearing a scream, his servants summon the police. They find Dorian's body, suddenly aged, withered and monstrous, a knife plunged into his heart.

The Picture Of Dorian Gray was decried as immoral upon its publication because of its homoerotic overtones and depictions of debauchery. It would become a classic of Gothic horror.

It would be Oscar Wilde's only novel, though a famous, anonymously published gay erotic novel, Teleny, or The Reverse Of The Medal (1893), would also be attributed to him. Scholars believe that the book was in fact a collaborative effort written by his friends, with Wilde serving as editor.

Oscar Wilde's most famous play was The Importance Of Being Earnest (1895), a comedy that satirized the hypocrisy and foibles of Victorian society. The play is packed with Wilde's trademark witty dialogue.

In it, shallow and scheming aristocrats use the same alias (Earnest) in order to lead double lives. Considered Wilde's best play, it was also his last, closing after 83 performances as a scandal had ensnared him.

The hateful Marquess of Queensberry publicly accused him of being a "posing sodomite," so to avoid ruin, Wilde made a complaint of criminal libel against him. He was arrested and released on bail.

A team of detectives led Queensberry's lawyers to London's gay underground, where Wilde's associations with transvestites, male prostitutes, and gay brothels were uncovered and leaked to the press, which assailed him nonstop.

Queensberry's lawyers claimed that the alleged libel was done for the public good. He was acquitted and Wilde found himself arrested for "gross indecency" - a term for homosexual acts that were illegal under British law.

The jury in Wilde's first trial failed to reach a verdict. At his final trial, presided by Justice Sir Alfred Wills, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to the maximum of two years imprisonment - a sentence that the judge believed was too lenient for the "crime" of homosexuality.

Wilde served his time at three different prisons. When he was released, prison life had left him in poor health. He spent his last years abroad in self-imposed exile, living under an assumed name.

He used the alias Sebastian Melmoth, a name based on St. Sebastian, a Christian martyr believed to have been gay, and the main character of Melmoth The Wanderer, a Gothic novel written by Wilde's great uncle, Charles Robert Maturin.

Wilde was broke, so his wife, who refused to meet with him or let him see his children, sent him money when she could. He took up with his first lover, Robert Ross, and they spent the summer of 1897 together in Northern France, where Wilde wrote his famous poem, The Battle Of Reading Gaol.

Despite the objections of their families and friends, Wilde was later reunited with Bosie Douglas, and by late 1897, they were living together in Italy. They would break up again, this time for good.

Wilde moved to France and took up residence at the Hotel d'Alsace in Paris, where he enjoyed the open and uninhibited gay life that had been denied him in England. He died of cerebral meningitis on November 30th, 1900, at the age of 46.

Some have speculated that the meningitis was a complication of syphilis, but Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, said that it was a complication of a surgical procedure, most likely a mastoidectomy. Wilde's own doctors blamed the meningitis on an old suppuration of the right ear.

Oscar Wilde remains to this day one of the world's great literary icons.

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Quote Of The Day

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"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection."

- Oscar Wilde

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a 58-minute documentary on Oscar Wilde. Enjoy!

Notes For October 15th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 15th, 1844, the legendary German writer and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Rocken bei Lutzen, Prussia, the son of a Lutheran pastor and teacher.

The oldest of three children, Nietzsche's brother Ludwig died at the age of two, a year after their father died of a brain ailment at the age of 33. Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth would later figure in the controversy that still surrounds his philosophy and writings.

As a boy, Friedrich Nietzsche attended a boys' school, then a private school. In 1858, the 14-year-old Nietzsche displayed particular talent for both music and language, so the world famous school at Schulpforta accepted him as a student.

While studying there, he received his first important introduction to literature, especially ancient Greek and Roman literature. After graduating in 1864, Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn, where he studied theology and classical philology.

After his first semester, he lost his faith and ended his theological studies. Around this time, he had read David Strauss' famous book, The Life of Jesus, a debunking of the Bible as mythology.

However, two years earlier, in an essay titled Fate and History, Nietzsche had already argued that the central beliefs of Christianity had been discredited by historical research.

Deciding to become a classical philologist, Nietzsche followed his favorite professor to the University of Leipzig. At this time, he began delving into philosophy, studying the works of the thinkers of the day, such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Albert Lange.

In 1869, although he was only 24 years old and had neither a doctorate nor a teaching certificate, Nietzsche was offered a professorship in classical philology by the University of Basel in Switzerland. He accepted the offer and served for ten years. He remains one of their youngest tenured Classics professors on record.

During this time, Nietzsche struck up a close friendship with legendary composer Richard Wagner and his wife, Cosima. He had met Richard first in 1868. Nietzsche admired the Wagners greatly, and they introduced him to their inner circle of friends.

His friendship with the Wagners would sour after Richard began to champion German culture, which Nietzsche considered to be a contradiction in terms. He would later blast Wagner in his 1888 book, The Case Of Wagner.

In 1872, Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, where he argued that ancient Greek tragedy was the highest form of art. This was because its blending of Apollonian and Dionysian elements into a whole allowed the viewer to experience the full spectrum of the human condition.

The Apollonian impulse is detached, rational, sober, and emphasizes superficial appearance, whereas the Dionysian impulse is immersion in the whole of nature, intoxication, irrationality, and inhumanity.

Nietzsche argues that it's not healthy for the individual or society to be ruled by either impulse. Instead, they should be combined to create a healthy whole.

His 1878 book, Human, All Too Human, was a reaction to the pessimism of Wagner and Schopenhauer. It was a book of aphorisms on subjects including metaphysics, religion, the sexes, and morality.

It was the first of Nietzsche's writings that would be taken out of context by the Nazis to build the foundation of their own philosophy - despite the fact that Nietzsche had also said "Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins."

In 1879, Nietzsche resigned his professorship due to a severe decline in his health. While serving as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War, he contracted several diseases, including diphtheria and dysentery.

Some believe that he also contracted syphilis, which would eventually cause his mental illness and death. After leaving the university, he continued to write, and in 1881 he began using a typewriter, as his eyesight was failing.

In his 1881 book Daybreak, Nietzsche began his "campaign against morality," criticizing the moral schemes of such institutions as Christianity and utilitarianism. His aim was not to destroy morality, but to replace the moral schemes of the aforementioned institutions with a new moral code.

There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all morality, and exceptional people should no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness. The old style of morality is for unexceptional people who are satisfied with their mediocrity. Thus, Nietzsche's credo is "become what you are."

The Gay Science (1882), a mixture of philosophy and poetry, contained this famous passage:

The madman jumped into their minds and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Had it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

Nietzsche's most famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published in four parts between 1883 and 1885, was a philosophical novel that incorporated all of his ideas into a prose narrative that cleverly parodied the Bible.

It told the story of Zarathustra, a wandering prophet who seeks to teach people how to live a fulfilling life in a world without meaning. Although Zarathustra was based on the Persian prophet Zoroaster, he seems more like Jesus Christ - or rather, an anti-Christ.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not a traditional novel by any means. It's a very dense and complex treatise on philosophy and morality. It explores Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch, or overman, better known in English as the superman - another concept bastardized by the Nazis after Nietzsche's death.

Whereas Hitler's idea of a superman was a physically strong Aryan warrior, Nietzsche's ubermensch was mentally as well as physically strong - a well-rounded superman - and could be of any race.

On January 3rd, 1889, Nietzsche collapsed after witnessing the whipping of a horse and throwing his arms around the animal's neck to protect it. This event triggered in Nietzsche a severe psychotic episode from which he would not recover, as it was believed that he was in the final stages of syphilis.

He started sending incoherent letters to friends. Claiming to have been crucified by German doctors, he called for the abolishment of anti-Semitism, the execution of the German emperor, and for all European powers to declare war on Germany.

Nietzsche's mother had him committed to a psychiatric hospital. Later, his sister Elisabeth returned from Paraguay following the suicide of her husband, a notorious anti-Semite. While she cared for her brother, Elisabeth studied his works and read through all of his unpublished manuscripts.

She hired writer and philosopher Rudolf Steiner to tutor her so she could understand her brother's writings. After a few months, Steiner gave up, declaring that it was impossible to teach her anything about philosophy.

Following a series of strokes and a bout with pneumonia, Friedrich Nietzsche died on August 25th, 1900 at the age of 55. His sister Elisabeth took control of his literary legacy. The following year, she had his last book published posthumously.

The Will to Power (1901) was actually a patchwork quilt of bits and pieces of previously unpublished manuscripts cobbled together by Elisabeth Nietzsche, who took great liberties with the material, and most of it out of context.

The final product was a hodgepodge of Nietzschean philosophy distorted and slanted to suit Elisabeth's anti-Semitic, nationalistic convictions. When Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, the eightysomething year old Elisabeth Nietzsche became enamored with the dictator.

Hitler was equally enamored with Elisabeth's bastardization of her brother's work. He made Friedrich Nietzsche the official philosopher of the Third Reich. In life, Nietzsche was no anti-Semite; he broke ties with his editor, Ernst Schmeitzner, because he was disgusted by Schmeitzner's anti-Semitism.

Nietzche's relationship with his sister was a rollercoaster ride of conflict and reconciliation, as Nietzsche was also disgusted by her anti-Semitism and that of her husband. And, as previously mentioned, Neitzche had a low opinion of German culture. He also despised nationalism.

Today, over a hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche still remains one of the world's most influential and controversial philosophers.

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Quote Of The Day

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"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's classic philosophical novel, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Enjoy!

Notes For October 14th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 14th, 1888, the famous Kiwi writer Katherine Mansfield was born in Wellington, New Zealand. She was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp. The third of four children, she had two older sisters and a younger brother.

Her father was a banker who would become the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and be knighted as well. The Australian-born English novelist Elizabeth von Arnim was her cousin.

Although her first published short stories would appear in the High School Reporter and Wellington Girls' High School magazines, the teenage Katherine Mansfield had musical aspirations.

She was an accomplished cellist who initially planned to become a professional musician; she developed a crush on fellow cellist Arnold Trowell, whose father was her music teacher, but her feelings were mostly unreciprocated.

Mansfield began keeping journals when she was nine years old. She wrote of her growing alienation from provincial white New Zealand society and her disdain for her fellow whites over the repression of the Maori (New Zealand aboriginal) people. In her fiction, she depicted Maoris in a positive or sympathetic light.

In 1903, Mansfield moved to London, where she attended Queen's College with her sisters. While continuing with her cello studies, she contributed to the school newspaper. She eventually became editor of the paper, introducing its readers to the French Symbolists and Oscar Wilde. Her peers regarded her as vivacious and charismatic.

From 1903 to 1906, Mansfield traveled through Europe, living mostly in Belgium and Germany. After completing her schooling in England, she returned to her home in New Zealand, where she began her writing career. She quickly tired of the provincial life and returned to London, falling into the bohemian life.

Katherine Mansfield was known for her restless and rebellious nature, so the bohemian life suited her. She was bisexual and had many lovers, mostly male, though she had some lesbian relationships. One was with Ida Baker, a South African fellow writer who would become a lifelong friend.

In 1908, when she returned to London, Katherine sought out her old friends, the Trowell family. Her teenage crush Arnold Trowell was involved with another woman. Katherine soon found herself involved in a passionate affair with his brother, Garnet.

By 1909, Mansfield had become pregnant with Garnet's child, but his parents disapproved of their relationship, so they broke up. She hastily married George Bowden, a singing teacher eleven years her senior, but left him the same night after failing to consummate the marriage.

Her mother came to see her and blamed the breakup of the marriage on Ida Baker. She sent Katherine to Bad Worishofen, a spa town in Bavaria, where she miscarried after trying to lift a heavy suitcase and place it on top of a cupboard.

Mansfield's life in Bavaria had a major effect on her writing. She was introduced to the works of Anton Chekhov, who would prove to be a bigger influence on her than Oscar Wilde. In January 1910, she returned to London, where she had over a dozen works published in The New Age.

A socialist magazine edited by A.R. Orage, it was a highly regarded intellectual publication. In 1911, Mansfield's first short story collection, In A German Pension, was published. A hit with critics, the book would be greatly enjoyed by readers during World War I, due to its negative portrayal of Germans.

The Great War had a major effect on Katherine Mansfield's life and writing. In 1915, news that her younger brother, to whom she was very close, had been killed in action shocked and traumatized her.

To cope with her loss, she took refuge in her memories of him, basing her fiction on nostalgic reminisces of their childhood together. In one of her poems, she wrote of a dream she had shortly after her brother's death:

By the remembered stream my brother stands
Waiting for me with berries in his hands...
"These are my body. Sister, take and eat."

Mansfield's best collection of short stories, The Garden Party and Other Stories, published in 1922, was also inspired by her childhood in New Zealand.

In 1911, Mansfield submitted a short story to a new avant-garde literary magazine called Rhythm. The editor, John Middleton Murry, rejected it as too lightweight.

So, Mansfield submitted another story, The Woman at the Store, a dark tale of murder and insanity. Not only did Murry publish it, he and Mansfield began a seven-year relationship that resulted in their marriage in 1918. Their life, however, was not a happy one.

Stephen Swift, the publisher of Rhythm, fled and left John responsible for all the magazine's debts. Katherine's health began to deteriorate from, among other things, an undiagnosed case of gonorrhea. She left John twice, but returned to him each time.

In 1915, she had an affair with French writer Francis Carco after visiting him in Paris. She retold the story of this relationship in her short story, An Indiscreet Journey. That same year, she learned of her brother's death in the war.

In 1916, Katherine Mansfield entered her most prolific period as a writer, and her relationship with John Murry improved. She broadened her literary acquaintances, meeting great writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey, and Bertrand Russell through social gatherings and mutual friends.

Unfortunately, in December of 1917, Mansfield fell ill and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In April of 1918, her divorce from her husband George Bowden was at last finalized, so she married John Murry. The following year, he became the editor of a prestigious weekly journal called Athenaeum.

Mansfield wrote over a hundred reviews for the magazine. During the winter of 1918-19, because of her poor health, she stayed in a villa in San Remo, Italy, with her friend and ex-lover, Ida Baker.

Their relationship became strained, and Katherine wrote to John of her depression, so he came to stay over the Christmas season. But their relationship too became strained and they often lived apart.

Katherine Mansfield spent her last years seeking unorthodox treatments for her tuberculosis, but none of them worked. She died on January 9th, 1923, at the age of 34. She was a master of the short story, a modernist, an early feminist, and a progressive thinker ahead of her time.

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Quote Of The Day

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“Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.”

- Katherine Mansfield

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a 52-minute documentary on Katherine Mansfield. Enjoy!

Notes For October 13th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 13th, 1943, the famous American poet Robert Lowell was sentenced to a year in prison for evading the draft. A conscientious objector, he refused to be drafted.

He opposed saturation bombings and other tactics used by the Allies that targeted civilians in enemy countries, which he saw as crimes against humanity. He served his time at New York's West Street jail.

Among the most controversial Allied campaigns of World War II were the bombing of Dresden, Germany, which killed 25,000 civilians, and the firebombings of Kobe and Tokyo, Japan. Nearly 10,000 civilians were killed in Kobe, while at least 70,000 were killed in Tokyo. Campaigns like these, in cities with little to no military significance, were waged to terrorize and demoralize the populace.

Robert Lowell was born into a prominent Boston family whose ancestors included William Samuel Johnson, (a signer of the United States Constitution) Calvinist theologian Anne Hutchinson, the second governor of Massachusetts, and two passengers on the Mayflower.

Lowell sought to separate himself from his family's history and rejected their Episcopalian religious tradition, converting to Catholicism.

Although his new faith would influence the writing of his first two books, Lowell left the Catholic Church not long after his second book was published in 1946.

Lord Weary's Castle (1946), a poetry collection, won Robert Lowell a Pulitzer Prize at the age of 30. It featured one of his classic poems, The Quaker Graveyard In Nantucket.

a Like the other poems in the book, it featured Lowell's trademarks: rigorous formality, violent imagery, and powerful use of meter and rhyme. A good example can be found in these lines:

The bones cry for the blood of the white whale,
the fat flukes arch and whack about its ears,
the death-lance churns into the sanctuary, tears
the gun-blue swingle, heaving like a flail,
and hacks the coiling life out: it works and drags
and rips the sperm-whale's midriff into rags,
gobbets of blubber spill to wind and weather.

Lowell returned to Boston in 1954 after living abroad for several years. He became involved with the Beat Generation of writers and artists, watching other Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg perform readings.

He incorporated their open, confessional narrative voices into his own more formal style of poetry. In his 1959 poetry collection Life Studies, Lowell wrote of his breakdown, his struggle with mental illness, and the breakup of his marriages.

In the 1960s, Lowell became a champion of the civil rights movement and a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. He was among a group of writers who led a march to the Pentagon in 1967.

Robert Lowell published many books and divided his time between Boston and London. He died of a heart attack in 1977 at the age of 60.

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Quote Of The Day

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"If youth is a defect, it is one we outgrow too soon."

- Robert Lowell

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a recording of Robert Lowell reading his poem, Old Flame. Enjoy!

Notes For October 9th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 9th, 1849, Annabel Lee, the classic final poem by the legendary American writer Edgar Allan Poe, was published. It was published posthumously by the New York Daily Tribune, just two days after his death.

Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston in January of 1809, would become most famous as a master of the short story and the author of classic Gothic horror tales such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, and The Fall of the House of Usher.

However, he began his literary career as a poet, wrote poetry prolifically, and became famous for classic poems such as The Conqueror Worm and The Raven. His last great poem was Annabel Lee.

Written in May of 1849 as Poe's life was falling apart and his health rapidly deteriorating, Annabel Lee was an ode to his great love, his young wife Virginia, who had succumbed to tuberculosis two years earlier at only 24.

Virginia, a cousin of Poe's, was thirteen when they first married, though they wouldn't share a bed until she was sixteen. They adored each other. Virginia often sat close to Poe while he wrote. She maintained his pens and prepared his manuscripts for mailing.

In a letter to a friend, Poe wrote of his Virginia, "I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife." When she contracted tuberculosis in 1847 at the age of nineteen, Poe was devastated.

Virginia turned to her husband for the strength to fight her illness. A year before her death, she wrote this poem:

Ever with thee I wish to roam —
Dearest my life is thine.
Give me a cottage for my home
And a rich old cypress vine,
Removed from the world with its sin and care
And the tattling of many tongues.
Love alone shall guide us when we are there —
Love shall heal my weakened lungs;
And Oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend,
Never wishing that others may see!
Perfect ease we'll enjoy, without thinking to lend
Ourselves to the world and its glee —
Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.

Unfortunately, as Virginia's illness grew worse, Poe fell back into the alcoholism that had nearly destroyed him in the past. Her death devastated the man who had loved her so dearly.

A friend remarked:

The loss of his wife was a sad blow to [Poe.] He did not seem to care, after she was gone, whether he lived an hour, a day, a week or a year; she was his all.

Drowning in his grief for Virginia, Poe visited her grave often and drank heavily. The more he drank, the worse his mental state became. He tried in vain to move on, knowing that he really couldn't live without her.

He dated poet Sarah Helen Whitman, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Their engagement was called off as a result of Poe's drinking, his mental instability, and the interference of Sarah's mother, who did all she could to sabotage the relationship.

Poe returned to Richmond and resumed his relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster. He later returned to Baltimore, where he plunged into a quagmire of severe alcoholism and mental illness. He fell into financial ruin and disappeared.

Before his disappearance, Poe gave a manuscript to a friend of his. It was something he'd written a while back, a poem he described as a "little trifle that may be worth something to you." It was his completed manuscript of Annabel Lee.

On October 3rd, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found wandering the streets of Baltimore by a man named Joseph W. Walker. Severely ill, incoherent, and wearing someone else's clothes, Poe was taken to Washington College Hospital. He died four days later at the age of 40.

Poe's death certificate and medical records were lost in a fire, so the actual cause of his death remains a mystery. Newspapers reported that he died of "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation."

These were common euphemisms used when a person died of illicit causes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or venereal disease. They were also used when the authorities wanted to keep the real cause of death quiet.

Some scholars and biographers have suggested that Poe may have been murdered for political reasons or may have contracted rabies, syphilis, meningitis, or another illness. Others theorize that he just drank himself to death out of grief, which, sadly, is the most likely case.

It has been theorized that Poe was a victim of cooping, a form of electoral fraud common in the 19th century. Cooping gangs would kidnap citizens off the street, ply them with alcohol, beat them, and force them to vote for a particular candidate (multiple times, using fake papers and disguises) under the threat of more violence or death.

Rufus Griswold, an enemy of Poe's who had published his work in the past, somehow became his literary executor. He wrote a biography of Poe called Memoir of the Author, where he described the writer as a depraved madman addled by drink and drugs.

Most of Griswold's claims were either outright lies or half-truths. For example, although Poe was an opium user and wrote about it, he was only a casual user and never became addicted to the drug.

Griswold's biography was virulently denounced by those who knew Edgar Allan Poe. The letters that Griswold presented as proof of his claims were later revealed to be forgeries.

Over a hundred years after Poe's death, his classic poem Annabel Lee would inspire the legendary Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov to write his classic novel, Lolita (1955).

The novel opens with protagonist and narrator Humbert Humbert recalling his great childhood love Annabel Leigh, (named after Poe's Annabel Lee) her sudden death from typhus, and the grief that would lead him down a path of depravity and self-destruction, ending in his death.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world."

- Edgar Allan Poe

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, Annabel Lee. Enjoy!

Notes For October 8th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 8th, 1943, the famous American writer R.L. Stine was born. He was born Robert Lawrence Stine in Columbus, Ohio. The oldest of three children, Stine's father was a shipping clerk, his mother a homemaker.

When he was nine years old, Stine found a typewriter in his attic. He began writing with it immediately, typing up everything from short stories to joke books. After graduating from Ohio State University in 1965, Stine moved to New York City to become a writer.

In 1969, he married his girlfriend Jane Waldhorn, a writer and editor who would found the children's book publishing company Parachute Press. In 1980, the Stines had their first and only child, a son named Matthew.

As a writer, R.L. Stine got his start writing joke books for children. He wrote dozens of joke books, publishing them under the pseudonym Jovial Bob Stine. He created the teen humor magazine Bananas and worked for years with the children's cable TV channel Nickelodeon. He would later switch genres from humor to horror.

In 1987, Stine published his first teen horror novel, Blind Date. He would follow it with Twisted, Beach Party, The Boyfriend, The Baby-sitter, Beach House, Hit And Run, The Girlfriend, and other titles, most of which were published as part of a series - the Point Horror series.

Around this time, he also co-created and served as head writer for the Nickelodeon children's TV series Eureeka's Castle, which ran from 1989-1995.

In 1990, Stine, with his wife's company Parachute Press, began publishing a new series of teen horror novels called the Fear Street series, set in the fictional East Coast town of Shadyland. Fear Street is a street in the town that had been named after a cursed family.

In the books, a group of average teenagers find themselves pitted against malicious, often supernatural adversaries, though sometimes the kids get caught up in non-supernatural horror dramas like murder mysteries.

Although the Fear Street novels are geared toward teen readers, they often featured violence and gore on a par with adult horror novels.

Tom Perrotta, the bestselling novelist known for such memorable works as Election (1998) and Little Children (2004), revealed in a 2007 interview that he had ghostwritten one of R.L. Stine's Fear Street novels, The Thrill Club.

In 1992, two years after his Fear Street teen horror series took off, Stine and Parachute Press decided to produce a series of horror novels geared toward preteen readers. It would prove to be his most successful series of books.

It would become a pop culture phenomenon that made R.L. Stine a household name and earned him a place on the Forbes List of the 40 Best Paid Entertainers of 1996-1997, as his income that fiscal year was $41,000,000.

The series of books was called Goosebumps. Stine cranked out dozens of them. The typical Goosebumps book was a paperback novella of approximately 120 pages long. The first title was Welcome To Dead House.

In it, 12-year-old Amanda and her younger brother Josh move into a house that their father inherited from his great uncle. The siblings soon discover that their new home, located in the town of Dark Falls, is cursed.

Every child who ever lived in the home was murdered; now it's haunted by the living dead children, who need to consume new blood from a freshly killed victim every year to preserve their immortal existence. So they tricked Amanda and Josh's father into moving there.

Though not as gruesome as Stine's Fear Street series, the Goosebumps books were just as scary. Some parents complained that they were too scary for their preteen readers. Nevertheless, the series became a monster hit with kids - no pun intended.

Translated into 32 languages, the Goosebumps series has sold over 300,000,000 copies worldwide. Frightening, clever, well written, and often containing surprise twist endings, the Goosebumps books also had many adult fans, myself included.

R.L. Stine won numerous awards for his Goosebumps books, which were adapted as a TV series that ran from 1995-1998. When the series debuted on CBBC in the UK, due to the government's strict censorship guidelines for children's programming, many episodes were banned or heavily cut.

However, on the cable channel Jetix, available in England and Ireland, the episodes aired with few or no cuts. In the U.S., in addition to the TV series, there were direct-to-video releases of Goosebumps shows on VHS and DVD.

A Goosebumps feature film was released in 2015 for the Halloween season, starring Jack Black as R.L. Stine. In it, the horrors from the reclusive writer's books come to life and threaten the Maryland town where he lives.

The movie did poorly on its opening weekend, grossing only $23 million on an estimated $53 million budget, but the total domestic gross for its theatrical run was $80 million, with a worldwide total gross of $158 million.

So, a sequel, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, was released three years later. Its opening weekend was worse than the previous film's, grossing only about $15 million on a lower budget of $35 million. The total worldwide gross was $93 million.

In Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, some kids find an old manuscript while cleaning out an abandoned house. They recite an incantation in it, unknowingly resurrecting Slappy the Dummy, a demonic ventriloquist's dummy.

In 1995, after writing numerous children's books, Stine published Superstitious, his first horror novel geared toward adult readers. Unfortunately, the book was poorly received and became a critical and commercial failure.

Stine has since written other adult oriented novels, such as The Sitter and Eye Candy, but they too poved nowhere near as successful as Stine's children's horror novels.

He has published other horror series for kids, including Ghosts Of Fear Street (a younger version of the Fear Street series geared toward preteens) and The Nightmare Room. He also published a non-horror series called the Rotten School books, which featured the comic misadventures of a group of kids at boarding school.

R.L. Stine's most recent horror series for children is the Goosebumps SlappyWorld books, launched in 2017 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original series, narrated by / and or featuring Slappy the Dummy, the most famous villain of the original Goosebumps series.

A new Goosebumps TV series was produced by the Disney+ / Hulu streaming service that ran from 2023-2025. Unrelated to the previous movies, it was about a group of high school students who accidentally unleash supernatural forces on their town and must work together to stop the evil.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I'm really a writing machine. I have no rituals. I don't need a special desk or special background music. As long as I have a keyboard in front of me, I can write."

- R.L. Stine

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of R.L. Stine's classic Goosebumps novel, Night of the Living Dummy.

Notes For October 7th, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On October 7th, 1955, the legendary American poet Allen Ginsberg gave his first public reading of Howl, the epic poem that would become a classic anthem of the Beat Generation and make him world famous.

Ginsberg read his poem at The Six Gallery Reading, an event organized by poet Kenneth Rexroth and promoted by Ginsberg that brought together the Beat literati's East and West Coast factions.

The Six Gallery in San Francisco was a former auto repair shop that had been turned into an art gallery. After Rexroth introduced Ginsberg to poet Gary Snyder, the two men planned the Six Gallery Reading and sent out postcard invitations to the event.

Rexroth, Ginsberg, and Snyder were all scheduled to read, along with Philip Whalen, Philip Lemantia, and Michael McClure. Ginsberg introduced the group to Jack Kerouac, who would depict the reading in his classic novel, The Dharma Bums (1958).

Over a hundred people attended the Six Gallery Reading. They were asked to chip in for drinks, and after the collection was taken up, Jack Kerouac went out and bought four gallon jugs of wine which were passed around while the poets read.

Ginsberg was next to last to read. He went on around 11PM. Nervous at first, having never given a public poetry reading before, he began reading in a quiet voice. Then he got into the groove and found his rhythm, reading each line in one breath. Jack Kerouac chanted "Go! Go! Go!" as Ginsberg read, and the crowd went crazy.

The Six Gallery Reading got a ton of publicity. Everyone was talking about this amazing new poet named Allen Ginsberg and his incredible epic poem. An overnight sensation, he became a celebrity.

Howl, dedicated to Ginsberg's friend and fellow writer Carl Solomon, (whom he'd met when they were both patients in a mental hospital) was a revolution in American poetic voice, and these gutwrenching opening lines would be forever imprinted in the American consciousness:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night...

Michael McClure wrote of Ginsberg's reading of Howl:

Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America...

In 1956, Ginsberg's poem was published in book form as Howl and Other Poems - one of the most celebrated and controversial poetry collections of its time. It contained language and sexual imagery more daring than in the works of most other poets. 

The following year, U.S. Customs officials seized over 500 copies of Howl and Other Poems that had been sent from its original publisher in London. The collection was declared legally obscene and officially banned in the U.S.

So, when legendary poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti defied the ban, publishing the book himself and selling it at his famous San Francisco bookshop, the City Lights Bookstore, he was arrested on charges of obscenity.

The censorship of Ginsberg's book became a cause celibre among defenders of the First Amendment and the ban was overturned by presiding Judge Clayton Horn.

The judge found that Howl and Other Poems was not legally obscene because it possessed redeeming artistic value. Ferlinghetti's lead defense attorney, Jake Ehrlich, wrote a book about the case called Howl of the Censor.

Ginsberg's writing career took off, and his public readings always drew standing-room-only crowds. He would become one of the greatest and most influential American poets since Walt Whitman.

In 2010, Howl, an acclaimed feature film about the poetry collection's censorship battle, was released. It starred James Franco as Allen Ginsberg and Andrew Rogers as Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

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Quote Of The Day

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“One does not know yet whether Christ was God or the Devil - Buddha is more reassuring.”

- Allen Ginsberg

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete live recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his classic poem, Howl. Enjoy!