Friday, February 27, 2026
Notes For February 27th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 27th, 1807, the legendary American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine. A child prodigy, he began his schooling at the age of three. At six, he was studying Latin and reading Miguel Cervantes' classic epic novel, Don Quixote.
Longfellow was thirteen when his first published poem, The Battle of Lovell's Pond, appeared in the Portland Gazette. Two years later, he enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. There, he met legendary writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who became his lifelong friend.
After graduating in 1825 at the age of eighteen, he was offered a job as professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, on the condition that he travel to Europe to learn more languages. So, he embarked on a three-year European tour, where he became fluent in French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Portuguese.
While in Madrid, Longfellow met legendary American writer Washington Irving, who encouraged him to become a professional writer. Longfellow based his second book, a travelogue called Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea (1835), on his European tour.
Back in America, when he wasn't teaching at Bowdoin, he translated French, Spanish, and German textbooks. His first book, published in 1833, was a translation of the works of medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique.
In 1831, Longfellow married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Storer Potter. She died three years later from illness following the miscarriage of their only child. Her husband was devastated. At the time, he had been teaching languages at Harvard and had become fluent in Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic.
After losing his wife, Longfellow threw himself into his work, mostly to escape his grief. He worked on more translations and began publishing the poetry collections that would make him famous, such as Voices in the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).
To escape his loneliness, Longfellow socialized with fellow writers and scholars. In 1839, five years after he'd lost his wife, he found himself falling love again, with Frances "Fanny" Appleton, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. She wasn't interested in him.
Nevertheless, Longfellow determined to win her heart, writing to a friend, "Victory hangs doubtful. The lady says she will not! I say she shall! It is not pride, but the madness of passion." After a tumultuous seven year courtship, Fanny's dogged admirer won her heart.
It almost didn't happen when Longfellow published Hyperion, a Romance (1839), a novel inspired by their early courtship. The protagonist, Paul Flemming, a grief stricken American wandering through Germany, meets an Englishwoman named Mary Ashburton and determines to win her heart.
When Fanny learned that she was the inspiration for the character of Mary Ashburton, she was neither flattered nor amused. Longfellow wouldn't give up. When in a letter she finally agreed to marry him, he walked 90 minutes to her home rather than wait for a carriage.
The couple would remain together for eighteen years and have six children before tragedy struck again. In July of 1861, Fanny was trying to seal an envelope with hot wax when her dress caught fire. Her screams woke Longfellow from his nap, and he tried to save her.
Severely burned, Fanny was tended by a doctor who administered ether to her throughout the day and night. She died the next morning. Longfellow had been burned as well, but he would recover physically, growing a beard to hide his facial scars. Emotionally, he was destroyed.
Longfellow had used laudanum (a tincture of opium) to ease the pain of his burns; now physically healed, he used the drug to ease the pain of his depression. He feared that he might go insane and begged his family not to send him to an asylum. He determined to write again.
By now, Longfellow had become the most famous poet in America, and one of the richest writers as well. He continued to write poetry collections and novels. In 1867, he published his greatest work as a scholar - a translation of Dante Alighieri's classic poem, The Divine Comedy.
Longfellow also devoted his later years to social causes. A prominent abolitionist, he denounced slavery and supported the Union during the Civil War. He opposed a prewar compromise to allow slavery to preserve the union, but hoped that the Northern and Southern states could reconcile after the war ended.
As a poet, Longfellow was known as a master of lyric poetry. A versatile poet, he experimented with both traditional and free verse, using anapestic and trochaic forms, heroic couplets, ballads, sonnets, and blank verse - unrhymed iambic pentameter.
His greatest poems include Paul Revere's Ride, The Village Blacksmith, The Wreck of the Hesperus, and his classic epic poems, Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha, which was based on Ojibwe tribal legends.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died of peritonitis in 1882 at the age of 75.
Quote Of The Day
"The tragic element in poetry is like Saturn in alchemy — the Malevolent, the Destroyer of Nature; but without it no true Aurum Potabile, or Elixir of Life, can be made."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a complete reading of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha. Enjoy!
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Notes For February 26th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 26th, 1802, the legendary French writer Victor Hugo was born in Bensancon, France. He grew up during an important time in French history; when he was two years old, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor. By the time Hugo turned eighteen, the Bourbon Monarchy had been restored.
The opposing forces that shaped French history during this time were reflected in Hugo's parents. His father Joseph was an atheist and a high-ranking officer in Napoleon's army, while his mother Sophie was an extremely devout Catholic and Royalist.
Although Victor Hugo was close to his controlling mother, against her wishes, he married his childhood sweetheart, Adele Foucher. They had five children. Their first, Leopold, died in infancy. Hugo's eldest daughter, Leopoldine, died suddenly at the age of nineteen - shortly after her wedding.
Leopoldine and her husband were aboard a boat that capsized; she drowned, and her husband died trying to save her. Hugo, traveling in the south of France with his mistress, was devastated when he read about Leopoldine's death in a newspaper. She had been his favorite daughter. He would write many poems about her life and death.
As a young writer, Victor Hugo's main influence was François-René de Chateaubriand, founder of the Romanticism movement in French literature. He vowed to be "Chateaubriand or nothing." Hugo's first book, a poetry collection titled Odes et Poésies Diverses, was published in 1822, when he was twenty years old.
It was well received and earned Hugo a royal pension from King Louis XVIII, but it was his 1826 poetry collection, Odes et Ballades, that established him as one of the greatest poets of his time.
Victor Hugo first made a name for himself as a novelist with his 1829 novella, Le Dernier jour d'un Condamné. (The Last Day of a Condemned Man). The story is narrated by a man condemned to death. He describes his life in prison and bears his soul to the reader.
He never identifies himself by name, nor reveals his crime, only hinting vaguely that he killed someone. On the day of his execution, he is reunited with his three-year-old daughter, who doesn't recognize him. The novella would have a profound influence on great writers such as Albert Camus, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Two years after his novella Le Dernier jour d'un Condamné was published, Hugo released what would become his first classic full-length novel. Notre-Dame de Paris, best known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), was a huge critical and commercial success.
The tragic love story dealt with social injustice - the recurring theme in Hugo's prose. Set in late 15th century Paris, the novel tells the tale of Quasimodo, a deformed hunchback who lives in the Notre Dame cathedral, where he serves as the bell ringer.
The townspeople despise and shun him because of his deformities, and his adoptive father, a depraved priest named Claude Frollo, cruelly mistreats him. Quasimodo soon falls in love with Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy dancer, who has captured the hearts of most men in town, including Claude Frollo.
Esmeralda's physical beauty is nothing compared to her inner beauty, as she is very kind and compassionate. When the lust-crazed priest sends Quasimodo to kidnap Esmeralda, he is caught, beaten, and ordered to remain out in the searing heat. Esmeralda brings him water.
When Esmeralda falls in love with Phoebus de Chateaupers, the captain of the King's Archers, the jealous Claude Frollo nearly murders him in a fit of rage, then frames Esmeralda for the crime. She is sentenced to be hanged, but Quasimodo saves her from the gallows and takes her to the cathedral.
There, she would be safe under the law of sanctuary, but then the King vetoes the law and commands his troops to take Esmeralda from the cathedral. Claude Frollo betrays her and hands her over to them, then watches her hang.
Quasimodo kills the evil priest, then goes to the graveyard, where he climbs into Esmeralda's grave and dies with her. A year later, the skeletons of Esmeralda and Quasimodo are found locked in an embrace.
Victor Hugo's greatest novel was his legendary masterpiece, Les Miserables (1862), a dazzling 1,200+ page epic novel that took the author 17 years to write. Originally published in five volumes, Les Miserables opens in Digne in 1815, as poor peasant Jean Valjean is released from prison.
He served nineteen years - five years for stealing bread to feed his starving sister, plus an additional fourteen years for his frequent escape attempts. Forced to carry a passport that identifies him as a convict, Valjean finds himself scorned by society.
He becomes so angry and bitter that when the kindhearted Bishop Myriel takes him in, he steals the man's silverware, and later, a young boy's silver coin. The Bishop saves Valjean from the police and inspires him to repent and make an honest man of himself.
Valjean decides to return the silver coin he stole, then finds that the theft has been reported. Another conviction would result in a life sentence, so he goes on the lam. Using the alias Monsieur Madeleine, Valjean follows the Bishop's advice and reinvents himself as an honest, productive citizen.
All the while, he is pursued relentlessly by police Inspector Javert. Later, Valjean reveals his true identity when Javert mistakenly arrests an innocent man named Champmathieu whom he thinks is Jean Valjean.
When Valjean has a chance to kill Javert and escape, he refuses to do so, and for the first time, the policeman recognizes the immorality of the law to which he has dedicated his life. It drives him to suicide.
In addition to the story of Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert, Les Miserables follows many other characters, who also face the specter of social injustice.
The novel, rightfully considered one of the greatest ever written, has been adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, and television. The most famous adaptation, a hit Broadway musical, was itself adapted as a film in 2012, starring Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean.
Victor Hugo became involved in politics, where he would fight the social injustices he had written about. In 1841, King Louis-Philippe elevated him to the peerage, and he entered the Higher Chamber as a pair de France, (nobleman) where he spoke out against the death penalty and other forms of social injustice. He advocated freedom of speech and a free press.
Hugo soon tired of the monarchy and became a supporter of the Republican form of government. Thus, when the Second Republic was formed in France following the 1848 Revolution, Hugo was elected to the Constitutional Assembly and the Legislative Assembly.
When Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) seized total power in 1851 and established an anti-parliamentary constitution, Hugo openly denounced him as a traitor to France. The writer went into exile, living in Brussels and Jersey before settling in with his family on the channel island of Guernsey, where he would live until 1870.
While in exile, Hugo used his influence to help fight social injustice in other countries. He also wrote and published his famous anti-Napoleon III pamphlets, which, although banned in France, made a huge impact there. When Hugo returned to France in 1870 to a hero's welcome, he was elected to the National Assembly and the Senate.
Victor Hugo's writings were also influenced by his religious views, which changed radically over the years. At first, he was a devout Catholic like his mother, but then he came to loathe the Church, which he perceived as being indifferent to the plight of the poor and the oppression of the monarchy.
That Hugo's novels made the Pope's official banned books list didn't help, and he saw over 700 attacks on Les Miserables by the Catholic press. Hugo developed a lifelong seething hatred of the Catholic Church.
When his sons died, they were buried without a crucifix or priest, and Hugo's will stipulated the same for his own death. Despite his deep hatred of the Church and religion in general, Hugo was known to be a very spiritual man who believed in the power of prayer.
His last great novel, Quatre-vignt-Treize (Ninety-Three) was published in 1874. He died in 1885 at the age of 83.
Quote Of The Day
"It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life."
- Victor Hugo
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a reading of Volume 1, Part 1 of Victor Hugo's classic epic novel Les Miserables. Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Notes For February 25th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 25th, 1917, the legendary English writer and composer Anthony Burgess was born. He was born John Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England. His confirmation name, Anthony, would be added to his legal name.
The next year, in November of 1918, Burgess' eight-year-old sister Muriel died of Spanish Flu, which had become a pandemic. Four days after his sister's death, his mother died of the disease. His aunt Ann (his mother's sister) raised him while his father worked as a bookkeeper and part-time musician.
He would later say that he believed his father resented him for surviving the pandemic that killed his sister and mother. When his father remarried, he was raised by his stepmother.
As a young boy, Anthony Burgess was a loner, despised by other children because he liked to dress well and could read before he started elementary school. Although his father was a musician, Burgess didn't care about music until he heard a dazzling flute solo while listening to classical music on the radio.
After the piece ended, a voice announced that he had been listening to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un Faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) by legendary French composer Claude Debussy. Awestruck, Burgess told his family that he wanted to be a composer.
Burgess' family refused to let him study music because there was no money in it. Music wasn't taught at his school, so when he was around fourteen, he taught himself to play the piano. Later, he enrolled at Victoria University of Manchester as a music major.
Unfortunately, the music department turned him down because of his poor grade in physics. So, he switched his major to English. While at university, Burgess met Llewela "Lynne" Isherwood Jones, whom he would marry after they graduated.
During World War II, Anthony Burgess served as a nursing orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was disliked for his practical joking and anti-authoritarian nature. Once, he knocked off a corporal's cap; another time, he deliberately overpolished a floor to make the other men slip and fall.
In 1942, he asked for a transfer to the Army Education Corps. He excelled as an instructor, and though he loathed authority, he was promoted to sergeant. He was stationed in Gibraltar, where his talent for languages came in handy.
Burgess debriefed Dutch expatriates and Free French for army intelligence. His anti-authoritarianism got him into trouble again while on leave in a nearby Spanish town: he was arrested for insulting the fascist leader Generalissimo Franco. He was soon released.
While he was serving in the Army, his pregnant wife Lynne was attacked during the blackout by four GI soldiers who had deserted. She lost the baby, and the Army denied Burgess' request for leave to see her.
When Burgess left the Army in 1946, he had attained the rank of sergeant-major. He spent the next four years as a lecturer in speech and drama, then took a job as a secondary school teacher.
In 1954, he joined the British Colonial Service as a teacher and education officer. He was first stationed in Malaya, an experience that would serve as the inspiration for his first three novels.
The first book in the trilogy, Time For A Tiger, was published in 1956. The novel is set at the Mansor School in Kuala Hantu, where British resident teacher Victor Crabbe determines to neutralize the threat posed by a young communist student who's been influencing his classmates and indoctrinating them in his cause.
The second book in the trilogy, The Enemy In The Blanket (1958), proved to be controversial for, of all things, its cover art. Burgess was shocked and appalled by his publishers' choice for the book's cover art.
They had chosen an illustration of a Sikh rickshaw driver pulling a white man and woman in his rickshaw. This was unheard of in Malaya, and considered extremely insulting. Burgess found himself falsely accused of racism.
In 1962, Anthony Burgess published what is considered his greatest novel - a bold, brilliant, experimental work of dystopic science fiction. Its title, A Clockwork Orange, came from the British slang expression, "queer as a clockwork orange."
The novel is set in a dystopic fascist England of the future. The novel is narrated by its main character, Alex, a brilliant but psychopathic teenager who leads a gang of "droogs" that includes his friends Pete, Georgie, and Dim.
Alex and his gang meet at a milk bar, where they drink drugged milk to get them ready for a night of violent mayhem. One night, while joyriding in a stolen car, the gang breaks into an isolated cottage. They terrorize the married couple that lives there and rape the wife.
When he's not out with his gang, Alex passes the time in his dreary home, escaping his poor excuse for parents by blasting the works of his favorite composer, "Ludwig Van," (Beethoven) and masturbating to violent sexual fantasies.
Later, Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, but is beaten in their fight and Dim's hand is slashed open. After putting down the rebellion, Alex takes his gang out for drinks at the milk bar.
Georgie and Dim have had enough, but Alex demands that the gang follow through with Georgie's plan for a "man-sized" job and rob a rich old woman who lives alone. The robbery is botched when the old woman calls the police - but not before she is assaulted and knocked unconscious.
The gang then turns on Alex, attacking him and leaving him to take the fall when the police arrive. The old woman later dies of her injuries and Alex is charged with murder. He's sent to a brutal prison to serve his time.
After serving a couple years in prison, Alex becomes an involuntary participant in an experimental rehabilitation procedure called the Ludovico Technique, which, in two weeks, is supposed to remove all violent and criminal impulses from the human psyche.
The prison chaplain angrily condemns the Ludovico Technique, arguing that conscious, willing moral choice is a necessary component of humanity. Nevertheless, Alex undergoes the procedure.
For two weeks, in a horrific kind of aversion therapy, Alex's eyes are wired open and he is forced to watch violent images on a screen while being given a drug that induces extreme nausea.
Unfortunately, the soundtrack to the violent film presentation includes works by Beethoven, and Alex begs the doctors to turn off the sound, telling them that's a sin to take away his love of music, and Beethoven never did anything wrong. They refuse.
After the procedure is completed, Alex is brought before an audience of prison and government officials and declared successfully rehabilitated. They demonstrate how Alex is unable to react with violence even in self defense, and is crippled by nausea whenever he becomes sexually aroused.
The outraged prison chaplain again protests the Ludovico Technique, accusing the state of taking away Alex's God-given ability to choose good over evil. "Padre," a government official replies, "There are subtleties. The point is that it works."
Alex is released from prison, but his life plunges into a downward spiral. He finds that the Ludovico Technique has rendered him physically unable to listen to his Beethoven or defend himself from attack.
First, he's beaten by a former victim. When the police are called, they turn out to be Alex's old gang mate Dim and rival gang leader Billyboy. They beat him, too.
Later, Alex is befriended by a political activist who turns out to be the man whose wife Alex had raped during the home invasion. When he finally recognizes Alex as the gang leader, he tortures him with the classical music he once loved.
Alex attempts suicide, and a scandal erupts. The embarrassed government agrees to reverse the Ludovico Technique in order to quell all the bad publicity. They offer Alex a cushy job at a high salary, but he looks forward to returning to his life of violent mayhem.
He forms a new gang, but after watching them beat a stranger, he finds that he has tired of violence. Alex contemplates giving up gang life, becoming a productive citizen, and doing what he secretly always wanted to do - start a family of his own. He wonders if his children would inherit the violent tendencies he once had.
In the U.S. edition of the novel, the last chapter was omitted by the publisher, who wanted the story to end on a dark note (with Alex looking forward to resuming his life of violence) because he believed that the original UK edition ending (with Alex realizing the errors of his ways) was unrealistic.
Another issue with the original UK ending is that the reader is left wondering if Alex's ultimate rejection of violence is the genuine product of his free will or a lingering effect of the Ludovico Technique.
When the legendary director Stanley Kubrick adapted the novel as an acclaimed film in 1971, he felt the same way, and based his screenplay on the U.S. edition of the novel. It was a huge critical and commercial success.
Featuring Malcolm McDowell in the career making starring role as Alex, the film was rated X for its original theatrical release. Though controversial for its explicit sexual content and extreme violence, the film won numerous awards and was nominated for several Oscars.
In the UK, the movie was passed uncut, but a conservative outcry erupted over the film's negative influence on teenage boys and dark humored sexual violence. It resulted in Kubrick and his family receiving death threats.
Their London home was also besieged by protesters, so Kubrick withdrew A Clockwork Orange from circulation in the UK, and it wouldn't be seen there again for nearly thirty years, until after the director's death.
Today, both editions of A Clockwork Orange are available in the U.S., and it remains a classic work of literature famous for its dazzling experimental narrative. Alex speaks Nadsat, a lyrical dialect that combines British slang with modified Slavic and Russian slang and words specifically invented by the author.
Burgess would go on to write many more great novels, including The Wanting Seed (1962), Tremor of Intent: An Eschatological Spy Novel (1966), M/F (1971), and The End of the World News: An Entertainment (1982).
As a playwright, he would adapt A Clockwork Orange as a stage play; as a screenwriter, he wrote the screenplays for the popular TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and A.D. (1985) and contributed to the screenplays of feature films.
As a composer, his classical pieces were broadcast on BBC Radio. He translated Bizet's Carmen into English, and wrote an operetta based on James Joyce's Ulysses called Blooms of Dublin.
He also wrote a new libretto for Weber's opera, Oberon and wrote the book for the 1973 Broadway musical, Cyrano, basing it on his own adaptation of the classic play by Edmond Rostand.
Anthony Burgess' other literary works included poetry collections, children's books, and nonfiction works. He died of lung cancer in 1993 at the age of 76.
Quote Of The Day
"A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey."
- Anthony Burgess
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a full length BBC documentary on Anthony Burgess called The Burgess Variations. Enjoy!
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Notes For February 24th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 24th, 1786, the legendary German writer and folklorist Wilhelm Grimm was born in Hanau, Germany. As a boy, Wilhelm was strong and healthy, but over the years, he would suffer from an increasingly severe illness that left him weak. He and his older brother Jacob were inseparable.
In 1803, Wilhelm enrolled at the University of Marburg to study law, one year after Jacob began his studies there. Around 1807, the brothers began collecting folktales.
They were inspired by The Youth's Magic Horn, a multi volume collection of German folk songs and poems edited by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. The first volume was published in 1805.
The Grimm brothers would invite storytellers to tell their tales, which the Grimms then transcribed and edited, adding their own distinctive touches to the stories.
By 1812, their first collection of folk tales was published as Kinder und Hausmärchen. (Children's and Household Tales) It contained 86 stories.
A second volume, containing 70 tales, was published in 1814. During the Grimm brothers' lifetime, five more editions of their story collections would be released, some containing new stories.
Since then, all 211 stories would be published in one volume as Grimms' Fairy Tales. Some scholars believe that the Grimm brothers, both devout Christians, cut the salacious elements from the stories they collected.
They did not, however, tone down the dark and violent elements of the stories, which led to complaints that the stories were inappropriate for children. Thus, since their initial publication, the Grimms' Fairy Tales have been softened and changed considerably in retellings by writers and publishers.
The original, unaltered Grimms' Fairy Tales are still published and in the public domain. Parents who buy the original version of the book for their children are often shocked by the content, as are other readers who remember the softer retold versions.
Classic tales as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as in all the Grimms' original stories, had different endings, with the villains often tortured horribly and / or put to death.
Little Red Riding Hood (her original name was Little Red-Cap) and her grandmother are saved when a huntsman cuts open the wolf's stomach. He later skins the dead wolf and keeps the skin as a souvenir.
In Cinderella, (Cinderella was her nickname; her real name was Ashputtel) the nasty stepsisters mutilate their feet to try and fit into the glass slipper. Later, they get their eyes pecked out by doves as punishment for their cruelty and vanity.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs originally ends with the Wicked Queen lured to Snow White and Prince Charming's wedding - where she's forced to wear hot iron shoes and dance until she dies.
Despite their dark and sometimes gruesome nature, the Grimms' Fairy Tales remain an all-time classic work of literature, inspiring generations of writers.
Though his older brother remained a lifelong bachelor, Wilhelm Grimm married his girlfriend, Henriette "Dortchen" Wild, in 1825. She bore him four children. Their firstborn son was named after his uncle Jacob.
In addition to the fairy tales he compiled with his brother, Wilhelm published three books under his own name, a collection of Danish folk songs, a study of German runes, and a study of German folk legends.
(The Grimms' Fairy Tales were also criticized for being "not German enough.")
Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm later became professors at the University of Gottingen. They joined five of their colleagues and formed the "Gottingen Seven," an activist group that protested against Ernst August, the King of Hanover, over his abrogation of the constitution. The King fired them all from the university.
Wilhelm Grimm died of an infection in 1859. He was 73 years old.
Quote Of The Day
"Common to all fairy tales is the residue of a belief which goes back to the most ancient times and speaks of supersensory things in the picture-form."
- Wilhelm Grimm
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a dramatization of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, performed by English actor-comedian Rik Mayall. Complete with the story's original ending, it must be seen to be believed!
Friday, February 20, 2026
Notes For February 20th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 20th, 1926, the famous American writer Richard Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey. Born to Norwegian immigrant parents, he would grow up in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1943, after graduating from high school, he joined the military and served as an infantry soldier during World War II. After the war ended, Matheson enrolled at the University of Missouri, where he earned a degree in journalism.
His first published short story, Born of Man and Woman, appeared in 1950, in an issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story is narrated in broken English by the grotesque mutant eight-year-old son of a normal couple.
The "normal" parents keep their son chained up in the cellar and beat him frequently. When the mutant boy breaks the rules and sneaks upstairs to spy on his parents, he discovers that he has a normal little sister whom he never met or knew existed.
Encouraged by his first sale, Matheson moved to California, hoping to become a professional writer. There, he married his girlfriend, Ruth Ann Woodson. They had four children, three of whom (Chris, Ali, and Richard Christian Matheson) would also become writers.
Richard Matheson's first novel, Someone is Bleeding, was published in 1953, but his third novel, I Am Legend (1954), made his name as a writer. In it, a man named Robert Neville finds that he is apparently the last man left alive on Earth.
A pandemic quickly wiped out the rest of the world's population, but Neville is immune for some reason. He soon discovers that he is not alone; the world is still inhabited by the infected - who have become vampires that crave his blood.
The disease has mutated and the vampires can now spend brief periods of time in the daylight. After overcoming alcoholism and depression, Neville tries to find a cure for the disease before the vampires become indestructible.
I Am Legend would be adapted three times as a feature film: The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price, The Omega Man (1971) starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend (2007), starring Will Smith as Robert Neville.
Matheson's classic 1956 novel, The Shrinking Man, told the story of Scott Carey, a man exposed to radiation after accidentally ingesting an insecticide. The combination of the two alters Carey's biochemical structure, causing him to shrink in size a little every day.
Most of the story finds Carey at only seven inches tall. Ordinary small objects and creatures become terrifying. As he keeps shrinking, Carey soon realizes that he won't shrink to death, as he'd feared. Instead, he'll keep shrinking until he's the size of an atom.
The Shrinking Man is actually a scathing satire of 1950s white middle class manhood. When Scott Carey shrinks to doll size, he finds that he is no longer the man of the house. Now, his wife and children are intimidating him for a change - a huge blow to his ego and masculinity.
The Shrinking Man would be adapted by the author himself as the cult classic film The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). It would also be adapted as The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981), a comic fantasy about the dangers of industrial chemicals and deceptive advertising.
Lily Tomlin starred as an average housewife and mother whose exposure to chemicals in everything from laundry detergents to foods, combined with her unique body chemistry, causes her to shrink a little every day. When she reaches doll size, she becomes a media sensation.
In 1958, Matheson published A Stir of Echoes, a supernatural horror novel about a mild-mannered working class fellow, Tom Wallace, who is hypnotized at a party by his brother-in-law. Wallace doubts the effectiveness of hypnosis until a post-hypnotic suggestion unlocks formidable psychic powers within him.
Suddenly able to read minds and predict the future, Tom's life plunges into a downward spiral. Then the ghost of a murder victim begins haunting him, desperately searching for justice and peace. This memorable novel would be adapted as the horror film Stir of Echoes in 1999.
Matheson's 1975 fantasy novel Bid Time Return told the story of playwright Richard Collier, recently diagnosed with an inoperable, terminal brain tumor, who uses his mind to travel back in time to meet Elise McKenna, a famous stage actress from the past, after falling in love with a portrait of her.
Bid Time Return was adapted as a feature film called Somewhere In Time in 1980, directed by Jeannot Zwarc (best known for his previous film Jaws 2) and starring Christopher Reeve and Jayne Seymour. Taking liberties with the novel, it was panned by critics and a box office bomb, but developed a cult following over the years.
Richard Matheson's success as a novelist and short story writer got him noticed by television. He would write fourteen episodes of the classic TV series, The Twilight Zone (1959-64). His memorable episodes include the classic Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.
In this episode, an aerophobic salesman (William Shatner) notices something terrifying during his flight - a gremlin clinging to the plane's wing, trying to destroy the aircraft. Is it real or all in his mind?
Another great Twilight Zone episode Matheson wrote was Little Girl Lost. In it, a little girl falls out of her bed in the middle of the night and tumbles through a gateway into another dimension. Her father must go through and attempt a daring rescue before the door closes forever.
Little Girl Lost has been credited as an inspiration for the classic 1982 horror film Poltergeist, produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, and was parodied in a segment of one of the Treehouse of Horror Halloween episodes of The Simpsons.
Matheson and his close friend, writer Charles Beaumont, who also wrote for The Twilight Zone, belonged to the Southern California Writing Group in the 1950s and 60s. Other members included Ray Bradbury, William F. Nolan, Jerry Sohl, and George Clayton Johnson.
In the 1970s, Matheson wrote the screenplays for two TV movies, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler, which were based on a horror novel by Jeff Rice called The Kolchak Papers. The popular movies would spawn the short lived cult classic TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-75).
The first of Matheson's TV movies, The Night Stalker (1972), received record ratings for a TV movie. Darren McGavin starred as Carl Kolchak, a shrewd, nosy, obnoxious, wisecracking newspaper reporter covering a series of bizarre murders in Las Vegas.
All the victims were completely drained of blood. The police think they're dealing with an insane serial killer, but Kolchak's investigation leads him to something else - a real life vampire. After Kolchak destroys the vampire, the police launch a cover-up and run him out of town.
The sequel, The Night Stangler (1973), finds Kolchak in Seattle, uncovering another supernatural mystery - identical series of murders that have occurred every 21 years since at least 1931. The killer is on the prowl again, draining more victims of their blood.
This time, instead of a vampire, the killer is a former Civil War surgeon who discovered an elixir of life that grants him immortality. The formula must be taken every 21 years and requires a quantity of human blood from unwilling donors.
Richard Matheson wrote over two dozen novels and numerous short stories, as well as film and TV screenplays. He won several awards and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010. His final novel, Generations, was published in 2012.
He died in 2013 at the age of 87.
Quote Of The Day
"Life is a risk; so is writing. You have to love it."
- Richard Matheson
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a 47-minute Writers Guild Foundation interview with Richard Matheson. Enjoy!
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Notes For February 19th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 19th, 1917, the famous American writer Carson McCullers was born. She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her mother was the granddaughter of a Confederate war hero, her father a watchmaker and jeweler.
As a child, Carson McCullers was a musical prodigy. She began taking piano lessons at the age of ten. For her fifteenth birthday, her father gave her a typewriter. Nevertheless, she aspired to become a concert pianist.
In September of 1934, when she was seventeen years old, McCullers left home on a steamship bound for New York City, where she planned to study piano at Juilliard. Unfortunately, she lost her tuition money and was unable to attend the school.
McCullers then worked menial jobs while she taking creative writing classes at both Columbia University and New York University. By 1936, at nineteen, her first short story, Wunderkind, was published in Story magazine.
She'd found a new passion and decided to become a writer. A year later, in 1937, she married her husband, Reeves McCullers, an ex-soldier turned aspiring writer. They would separate in 1940. That year, she published her breakthrough debut novel, which established her as one of the greatest writers of her generation.
Set in the Depression-era American South, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter told the story of four ragtag misfits whose varied lives have several things in common - loneliness, isolation, and seemingly unattainable dreams.
Mick Kelly is a restless 14-year-old tomboy with androgynous looks and musical talent forced to be a mother to her siblings and go to work to support her family; Jake Blount is an alcoholic itinerant laborer whose socialist convictions get him into trouble.
Dr. Benedict Copeland, a black physician, suffers from both tuberculosis and his desire to help free his people from racist oppression. Biff Brannon is a married cafe owner whose masculine appearance masks his inner struggle with his bisexuality.
All four characters are connected by a mutual friend, John Singer, an intelligent deaf-mute who can write, sign, and read lips. They all find peace in Singer's kindness, wisdom, and willingness to listen to and understand them. What they don't know is that Singer is just like them, suffering in silence.
His companion of ten years - a big Greek man and fellow deaf-mute named Spiros Antonapoulos - became mentally ill and was institutionalized by a relative. While Singer was there to listen to other people's problems and comfort them, there is no one to listen to Singer and comfort him, which ultimately leads to tragedy.
All the characters in the novel are sad and intriguing, but there is nothing sentimental about their sadness. In fact, one of the novel's main themes is the selfish nature of loneliness and emotional detachment. The most intriguing characters are Mick Kelly and Biff Brannon, with their gender ambiguity.
At first, Mick dresses like a boy and acts like one, too. But after experiencing her first romantic relationship with Harry, a Jewish neighbor boy, which results in her first sexual experience, Mick changes her appearance, dressing and acting more like a lady.
Biff Brannon, impotent and emotionally distant from his wife, finds himself sexually attracted to the boyish-looking Mick, but rather than act on his impulses, he keeps his emotional distance.
When Mick starts dressing and acting like a woman, Biff loses sexual interest in her, but warms up to her emotionally. After his wife Alice dies, Biff feels little grief - their marriage was loveless - but he starts wearing her clothes and perfume.
There is also a strong homoerotic tone to the relationship between John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos - in the beginning, the two deaf-mute men walk together arm in arm, and later, Singer longs for his institutionalized companion - but they are not specifically described as a gay couple.
Carson McCullers was only 23 years old when The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter was published. For such a young novelist to have crafted such a deep and profound novel is amazing. The book became an overnight success, receiving rave reviews.
Critics admired McCullers' handling of racial issues (Dr. Copeland is angry with his fellow blacks who refuse to stand up for their rights and choose to accept their unequal status in society with aplomb) and the evils of anti-communist hysteria.
Her novel would foreshadow the coming of both the civil rights movement and the anti-communist witch hunts that would take place a decade after its publication, conducted by Joseph McCarthy, the notoriously corrupt Republican Senator from Wisconsin.
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter would be adapted as a feature film in 1968, (starring Alan Arkin as John Singer) and as a stage play in 2005.
In 1946, McCullers published another classic novel, The Member of the Wedding. It told the story of Frankie Addams, a lonely and alienated 12-year-old tomboy who dreams of running away to join her brother and his new wife on their honeymoon in Alaska.
The semi-autobiographical novel was based on McCullers' childhood. It explores the nature of racial and sexual identity, as Frankie is close to her family's black maid and wishes that people could "change back and forth from boys to girls." She would later adapt her novel as a Broadway play.
The issues of sexual identity raised in The Member of the Wedding came from the fact that McCullers herself was bisexual and had struggled with her own identity. Her volatile marriage didn't help matters.
After her separation, she moved in with George Davis, the editor of Harper's Bazaar, but ended up remarrying Reeves McCullers in 1945. Three years later, while suffering from depression, she attempted suicide.
Five years after that, in 1953, Reeves tried to convince Carson to commit suicide with him. She left him and he killed himself with an overdose of sleeping pills. Her 1957 play, The Square Root of Wonderful, was an attempt to come to terms with these painful experiences.
Carson McCullers was sickly throughout her life; she suffered strokes since childhood and contracted rheumatic fever when she was fifteen. By the time she was 31, strokes had paralyzed her left side completely.
She died of a brain hemorrhage in 1967 at the age of fifty. Her unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare, which she dictated during the last few months of her life, was published posthumously in 1999.
Quote Of The Day
"The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination."
- Carson McCullers
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a rare 1956 interview with Carson McCullers. Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Notes For February 18th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 18th, 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the classic novel by the legendary American writer Mark Twain, was published. It was a sequel to his previous classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).
Set in the pre-Civil War South, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn finds Tom Sawyer's best friend Huck Finn on an adventure of his own. The novel opens with Huck under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas.
The widow, along with her sister Miss Watson, are attempting to "sivilize" Huck. While he appreciates their efforts, he feels stifled by civilized life. With help from his best friend Tom Sawyer, Huck sneaks out one night.
When Huck's shiftless father Pap, a nasty, abusive drunkard, suddenly appears, Huck wants no part of him. Unfortunately, Pap regains custody of Huck and they move to the backwoods, where Pap keeps Huck locked in his cabin. Huck escapes and runs away down the Mississippi River.
He soon meets up with Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who has also run away, after Miss Watson threatened to sell him downriver, where life for slaves is brutal. Although he's headed for Cairo, Illinois, Jim's final destination is Ohio, a free state where slavery is illegal.
He hopes to buy his family's freedom and move them there. At first, Huck is unsure about whether or not he should report Jim for running away. Throughout the novel, as Huck travels with Jim and talks with him, the two form a close friendship.
Huck begins to change his mind about slavery, people, and life in general. He comes to believe that Jim is an intelligent, compassionate man who deserves his freedom. One day, Huck and Jim find an entire house floating down the river. They enter it, hoping to find food and valuables.
Instead, in one room, Jim finds the body of Huck's father, Pap, who was apparently shot in the back while robbing the house. Jim won't let Huck see the dead man's face and doesn't tell him that it's Pap.
Later, to find out what's going on in the area, Huck dresses up in drag and passes himself off as a girl named Sarah Williams. He meets a woman and enters her house, hoping that she won't recognize him as a boy.
She tells him that there's a $300 bounty on Jim's head, as he is accused of killing Huckleberry Finn! The woman becomes suspicious of Huck's disguise. When she tricks him into revealing that he's a boy, Huck runs off. He warns Jim of the manhunt, then they pack up and flee.
As Huck and Jim continue their journey, they encounter more people and more trouble. First, they get caught in the middle of a blood feud between two families, the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. Then they rescue two clever con men and get caught up in their schemes.
Huck is outraged when one of the grifters turns Jim in for the reward. Even though it's against the law and a sin, (it's considered theft) Huck helps Jim escape after rejecting the advice of his conscience and famously declaring, "All right, then, I'll go to Hell!"
Around this time, Huck witnesses the attempted lynching of a Southern gentleman, Colonel Sherburn. The Colonel turns back the lynch mob with his rifle - and a long speech about the cowardly nature of "Southern justice."
Although Huck had helped Jim escape from custody, he is soon recaptured. Later, Huck learns that Miss Watson died, and in her will, she freed Jim. When Jim tells Huck that the dead man they found in the floating house was his father, he realizes that he can finally go home.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is rightfully considered an all-time classic work of American literature. Although geared toward young readers, the novel has become a favorite of readers of all ages. It has been adapted numerous times for the radio, stage, screen, and television.
A month after it was first published, a public library in Concord, Massachusetts, banned The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its shelves, calling the novel tawdry, coarse, and ignorant. It was the beginning of a controversy that continues to this day.
From its first publication through the early 1950s, bans and challenges to the novel were the result of its condemnations of slavery and lynching, and its depiction of a black slave who proves to be more intelligent and compassionate than the white Southerners who had enslaved him.
Since the late 1950s, (when the Civil Rights movement began to gain momentum) the novel has faced bans and challenges in classrooms and school libraries from black activists for its frequent use of the racial epithet nigger and for its allegedly racist stereotyping of blacks.
Twain scholars point out that in using nigger, the author criticized white Southerners' racism by letting them speak their own ugly language. Those who decry the novel as racist fail to place it in its proper historical context.
In 2011, NewSouth Books, a publishing house in Alabama, issued a controversial new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - a bowdlerized edition with all uses of the word nigger changed to slave, and the word injun deleted entirely.
Suzanne La Rosa, co-founder of NewSouth Books, claimed that the changes make the novel more acceptable for the classroom, but scholars derided it as an attempt to whitewash the long history of white Southerners' virulent racism, which continues to this day.
Nevertheless, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains an all-time classic work of literature.
Quote Of The Day
"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
- Mark Twain
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a complete reading of Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Enjoy!
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Notes For February 17th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 17th, 1864, the legendary Australian writer Banjo Paterson was born. He was born Andrew Barton Paterson in New South Wales, Australia. When Banjo was five, his family lost their wool crop. After his uncle died, the family took over his farm in Illalong.
The farm was close to the main route between Melbourne and Sydney; Banjo grew up around horses and horsemen of all sorts, including coachmen, drovers, and polo players. Thus began his love for horses and the inspiration for his future writings.
He was tutored by a governess until he was old enough to ride a pony and could ride to the bush school for his education. Banjo was a good student and athlete but failed to win a scholarship to the University of Sydney.
So, he took a job as a law clerk, which he would use as a stepping stone toward becoming a solicitor. While working as a solicitor, Banjo began his literary career as a poet. He described himself as a "bush poet."
His first published poem, which appeared in the Australian nationalist literary magazine The Bulletin, blasted the British government's war in the Sudan. He struck up friendships with other great Australian writers such as E.J. Brady, Breaker Morant, and Henry Lawson.
In 1895, Banjo Paterson's classic first poetry collection, The Man From Snowy River and Other Verses was published. The title poem, written when Australia was at the cusp of gaining independence from England, would come to symbolize the national identity of Australia and her people.
The title character of this classic ballad is an Australian horseman who embarks on a heroic quest to capture a racehorse who escaped from its paddock and is now living with wild horses in the mountains. The poem and its author were honored on the Australian $10 note.
The Man From Snowy River would be adapted as a classic Australian feature film in 1982, directed by George Miller and starring Kirk Douglas, Tom Burlinson, and Terence Donovan.
Another of Paterson's classic bush ballads would be set to music and become the most popular Australian song of all time, affectionately referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia."
Waltzing Matilda told the story of a hungry swagman (Australian itinerant laborer) camping in the bush who catches a jumbuck (sheep) to eat. The sheep's owner arrives with three policemen to arrest the swagman, who commits suicide. His ghost then haunts the site.
Paterson sold the rights to the song, and the lyrics would be modified somewhat over the years. This is the original version:
Oh there once was a swagman camped in the billabong
Under the shade of a Coolabah tree
And he sang as he looked at the old billy boiling,
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me?
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda my darling
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
Waltzing Matilda leading a tucker bag
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me?
Down came a jumbuck to drink at the water hole
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him in glee
And he said as he put him away in the tucker bag
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me.
You'll come a waltzing Matilda my darling
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
Waltzing Matilda leading a tucker bag
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me.
Down came the squatter a riding on his thoroughbred
Down came policemen one, two and three
Where is the jumbuck you've got in the tucker bag?
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me.
You'll come a waltzing Matilda my darling
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
Waltzing Matilda leading a tucker bag
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me.
But the swagman he ups and he jumps in the water hole
Drowning himself by the Coolabah tree
And his ghost can be heard as it sings in the billabong
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me?
During the Second Boer War, Banjo Paterson became a war correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He also served as a war correspondent during the Boxer Rebellion in China, where he met Australian writer and adventurer George "Chinese" Morrison.
Back home in Australia, Paterson married his girlfriend Alice Emily Walker, who bore him two children, Grace and Hugh. Continuing his journalism career, he became editor of the Sydney Evening News (1904–06) and of the Town and Country Journal (1907–08).
During the Great War, unable to get a job as a war correspondent in Flanders, he drove an ambulance for the Australian Voluntary Hospital in Wimereux, France.
Paterson went home, but later returned to the French front as a commissioned officer with 2nd Remount Unit, Australian Imperial Force. He was wounded, went temporarily missing in action, and served again in Cairo. He would be discharged with the rank of major.
He kept writing. Though primarily known as a poet, he also published essays, short story collections, two novels, An Outback Marriage (1906) and The Shearer's Colt (1936), and a children's book called The Animals Noah Forgot (1933).
Banjo Paterson's classic bush ballads were originally published without sheet music. They would be set to music by many different performers over the years, establishing him as one of the all time great folk song writers.
He died of a heart attack in 1941, at the age of 76.
Quote Of The Day
"I have followed the wandering teamster's track, and it always led to a pub."
- Banjo Paterson
Vanguard Video
Today's video is a "virtual movie" of Banjo Paterson reading his classic poem, The Man From Snowy River, the soundtrack taken from a rare recording of the author. Enjoy!
Friday, February 13, 2026
Notes For February 13th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 13th, 1991, the famous auction house Sotheby's announced that the original draft of Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) had been discovered. Specifically, the first half of Twain's original draft manuscript, thought long lost.
The story of this major discovery began with a 62-year-old librarian from Los Angeles. Her aunt, who had lived in upstate New York, recently passed away. Six trunks full of her papers were sent to her niece. When the librarian finally got around to sorting through these papers, she made an incredible find.
Her grandfather, James Gluck, a lawyer and rare book collector, had acted as Twain's literary agent. Twain had sent Gluck the second half of his completed first draft of Huckleberry Finn to sell to the Buffalo and Erie Library in Buffalo, New York. He had once lived in Buffalo.
Twain had lost the first half of his manuscript, which is why Gluck only received the second half. For many years, it was believed that the first half had been lost forever. Then a librarian in Los Angeles sorted through trunks filled with her late aunt's papers.
There, in one of the trunks, she found the lost first half of Twain's original draft of Huckleberry Finn. Stunned, she asked Sotheby's to authenticate the manuscript. They had it shipped by armored car and plane to New York City, and found that it was indeed Mark Twain's lost original first half of Huckleberry Finn.
Since the manuscript contained the author's handwritten corrections and notes, there could be only one explanation for its existence: Twain had found the lost first half of his manuscript and sent it on to James Gluck in Buffalo. By then, he was already working on his second draft and gave no further thought to the original.
Finally put together as a complete whole, the original version of Huckleberry Finn is an amazing discovery. In addition to extended original scenes with more detail, it also included additional scenes that did not appear in the final version of the novel.
One of these additional scenes was a 15-page passage where, on a stormy night, Jim the runaway slave tells Huck Finn stories of his encounters with ghosts and corpses. Deemed too dark and macabre for a novel geared toward children, this scene had to be cut.
After a legal battle between Gluck's heirs, the Buffalo and Erie Library, and the University of Berkeley's Mark Twain Papers Project over the rights to the manuscript, an amicable settlement was reached between the parties.
The Buffalo and Erie Library retained the physical manuscript papers and all three parties would share equally in the royalties when the manuscript was published. Many publishing houses were chomping at the bit for the opportunity to publish it.
In 1995, Random House won the the bidding war for the right to publish the original version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Quote Of The Day
"Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
- Mark Twain
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a segment from the TV series 60 Minutes on a recent censorship controversy surrounding Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Notes For February 12th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 12th, 1938, the famous American writer Judy Blume was born. She was born Judith Sussman in Elizabeth, New Jersey. As a little girl, she recalled, "I spent most of my childhood making up stories inside of my head."
In 1961, she graduated New York University with a Bachelor's degree in education. Two years earlier, she married her first husband, John Blume, with whom she had two sons. They divorced in 1976; though Judy retained John's surname, she described their marriage as "suffocating."
Not long after her divorce in 1976, Blume married physicist Thomas Kitchens. The marriage ended two years later. She described it as "A disaster, a total disaster. After a couple years, I got out. I cried every day. Anyone who thinks my life is cupcakes is all wrong."
It wouldn't be until 1987 that Judy found her soul mate in George Cooper, a law professor turned nonfiction writer, and married him.
Judy Blume had been working as a teacher in 1969 when her first book was published, a funny picture book called The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo. Her children were in preschool at the time.
The following year, Blume established herself as one of the best young adult novelists of her time with two poignant and provocative novels, Iggie's House and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
Iggie's House told the story of Winnie Barringer, a young tomboy who is devastated when her best friend Iggie moves away. The Garbers, an African-American family, move into Iggie's old house and Winnie makes friends with the kids - Glenn, Herbie, and Tina.
Winnie soon learns an unforgettable lesson in the evils of racism when another neighbor, Mrs. Landon, a virulent bigot, determines to drive the Garbers out of the neighborhood. Winnie also observes the effects of Mrs. Landon's racism on her daughter, Clarice.
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is a memorable coming of age story centered on 11-year-old Margaret Simon. Margaret is the child of an interfaith marriage - her father is Jewish, her mother Christian.
Margaret's parents have no use for religion, so she wasn't raised in any faith. This irks her because her friends all have a religious affiliation and practice their faiths. Her Jewish grandmother is determined to see her raised as Jewish, which annoys both her parents.
Margaret's mother reveals that she's been estranged from her Christian parents for over a decade because they were fiercely opposed to her marrying a Jewish man. Meanwhile, Margaret strikes up a friendship with Nancy, the girl next door, and meets her friends Gretchen and Janie. They form a club called the Pre-Teen Sensations.
Together, they cope with the onset of puberty, with Margaret experiencing anxieties over feelings for boys, having to wear a bra, and getting her first period. Then, Margaret's mother makes the mistake of writing to her estranged parents.
Margaret's Christian grandparents pay an unexpected visit, revealing themselves to be virulent anti-Semites and demanding that Margaret be raised a Christian. Margaret's furious Jewish grandmother gets into a fight with them, and Margaret, who can't stand it anymore, explodes at all of them.
She tells them that she wants nothing to do with their god or their religions, and if she ever changes her mind, she'll decide what she believes in. Her parents applaud her. The novel ends with Margaret finally getting her period and happy that she's become a woman.
This fantastic and controversial novel is often attacked by conservatives for its sexual frankness and attitude toward religion and always appears on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books.
In 2023, it was adapted as a highly acclaimed feature film co-produced by Judy Blume and with excellent performances by newcomer Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret and Kathy Bates as her Jewish grandmother.
Freckle Juice (1971) is another funny children's picture book about a young boy named Andrew who wants freckles like his friend Nicky has. Sharon, a girl in Andrew's class, sells him a recipe for "Freckle Juice" for fifty cents.
Andrew makes a batch of Freckle Juice - which contains disgusting ingredients - and drinks it, but no freckles appear. He's been swindled. Meanwhile, Nicky, who hates his freckles, buys a recipe from Sharon that's guaranteed to remove them!
Other memorable Judy Blume young adult novels include It's Not the End of the World and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, both published in 1972. In It's Not the End of the World, sixth grader Karen finds her life suddenly turned upside down.
Karen is overjoyed when her teacher turns out to be Mrs. Singer, the very nice teacher she desperately wanted. Unfortunately, Mrs. Singer, who got married over the summer, now acts like a total witch.
Meanwhile, Karen's parents' marriage disintegrates. They fight constantly and seem to really hate each other. When Karen's father announces his plans to file for divorce, her mother is finally happy - until Karen's angry teenage brother Jeff blows up at Mom and runs away from home.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is the first in a series of memorable novels featuring the Hatcher family. Peter Hatcher is a smart yet naive nine-year-old boy in the fourth grade. His 2-year-old little brother Farley, known by his nickname Fudge, is a holy terror.
The irrepressible Fudge wreaks all sorts of havoc around the house and out in public, and always gets away with it - while Peter is expected to be his brother's well behaved keeper. When Fudge gets into trouble, Peter gets the blame. Angry and resentful, he still loves his brother.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing would be followed by Superfudge (1980), Fudge-a-Mania (1990), and Double Fudge (2002). A spinoff of the Fudge series, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, was published in 1972.
This memorable novel featured Peter Hatcher's annoying classmate and sort-of friend Sheila Tubman in her own coming of age story. Though she has an abrasive, self-confident personality, Sheila suffers from several crippling phobias - fears of spiders, dogs, and swimming - which are the source of her secret shame.
When Sheila's family stays at a big house in Tarrytown, New York for the summer, she goes to camp and strikes up a friendship with Merle "Mouse" Ellis, an easygoing, tomboyish girl her age whose genuine courage inspires Sheila to conquer her fears.
In addition to her young adult novels, Judy Blume has also written novels for teenage and adult readers, which remain controversial to this day. Her novels for teenagers, beginning with Deenie (1973), dealt honestly with teen sexuality, including masturbation.
For this reason, disgruntled individuals and conservative groups have often tried to ban Blume's teen novels from high school library shelves. Her first novel geared toward adult readers, Wifey (1978), also drew criticism.
Wifey was set in the time of its publication - the 1970s. The main character, Sandy Pressman, is a bored New Jersey housewife who decides to bring life to her stagnant existence by having a passionate affair with her old high school boyfriend.
This was a time of sexual revolution - when conservative social mores gave way to liberalism and couples began experimenting with swinging and open marriages. Sandy soon discovers evidence that her husband is having an affair of his own...
Blume was sharply criticized for publishing Wifey under her own name instead of using a pseudonym. Even though the book was subtitled "An Adult Novel by Judy Blume," the author's young readers - especially her adolescent readers - took an interest in it.
Depsite the controversy, Wifey and Blume's other adult oriented novels Smart Women (1983) and Summer Sisters (1998) all became critical and commercial successes. To date, her works have won over 90 awards.
Her most recent book, In The Unlikely Event, was published in June of 2015. Set in the early 1950s, it tells the story of Miri Ammerman, a fifteen year old girl struggling to deal with both adolescence and the three plane crashes that take place in her New Jersey hometown within a three month period.
The novel was based on actual events in Judy Blume's life. Three plane crashes took place in her hometown, Elizabeth, New Jersey, from late 1951 through early 1952, claiming a total of 118 lives. Her father, a dentist, was called on to help identify the victims.
Quote Of The Day
"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear."
- Judy Blume
Vanguard Video
Today's video features Judy Blume discussing her most recent novel, In The Unlikely Event, live at the Politics & Prose bookstore and coffeehouse. Enjoy!
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Notes For February 11th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 11th, 1778, the legendary French writer and philosopher Voltaire made a triumphant return to Paris after a 28-year exile.
Voltaire (the pseudonym of Francois-Marie Arouet) was born to a middle class family. As a young man, he entered law school, but quit to become a writer. He began his literary career as a playwright.
As a young man, while working as secretary to the French ambassador to the Netherlands, he fell in love with a Protestant girl, but his devout Catholic father prevented him from marrying her, kindling within him a seething lifelong hatred of the Church and religion in general.
In addition to his plays, he wrote poetry and prose; these works were of a polemic nature, and he possessed a rapacious wit. He was condemned by the establishment as a dangerous radical. In 1717, he published his classic epic poem La Henriade, a satirical attack on the French monarchy and the Church.
The poem resulted in Voltaire's arrest. He was jailed in the Bastille for almost a year. Imprisonment failed to temper his poison pen, and by 1726, he found himself in trouble again.
Outraged by Voltaire's retort to his insult, Chevalier de Rohan, a young aristocrat, obtained a royal lettre de cachet from King Louis XV - a warrant for Voltaire's arrest and imprisonment without trial.
To avoid serving more time at the Bastille, Voltaire fled to England. He returned to Paris almost three years later. He continued to write and publish polemical essays, poetry, and prose.
His essay collection Philosophical Letters on the English praised the constitutional monarchy of England for its respect for human rights and condemned the French monarchy for its violations of them.
Its publication marked the beginning of an escalating outrage over Voltaire's writings. He would flee arrest again, then return. Eventually, King Louis XV banned him entirely from France.
He moved first to Berlin, then settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his classic comic novel Candide and lived for 28 years.
When Voltaire finally returned to Paris in February of 1778, he was met with a hero's welcome. Around three hundred people came to visit him. He died three months later at the age of 83.
Quote Of The Day
"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."
- Voltaire
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a complete reading of The Philosophy of Voltaire, an essay by the famous writer, philosopher, and historian Will Durant. Enjoy!
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Notes For February 10th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 10th, 1890, the legendary Russian writer Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow, Russia. He was born into a wealthy Russian-Jewish family. His father, Leonid Pasternak, was a famous artist; his mother, Rosa Kaufman, was a concert pianist. The Pasternaks were a liberal, intellectual family.
Boris Pasternak originally aspired to become a composer. He entered the Moscow Conservatory, but left abruptly in 1910, traveling to Germany and enrolling at the University of Marburg, where he studied philosophy.
After graduating, instead of a career in philosophy, he decided to become a writer. He returned to Moscow in 1914. Later that year, his first book, a poetry collection, was published.
During World War I, Pasternak taught school and worked at a chemical factory in Vsevolodovo-Vilve near Perm. He spent the summer of 1917 living in the steppe country near Seratov, where he fell in love for the first time.
Filled with a new passion, he began writing what would become his seminal poetry collection, My Sister Life. Its innovative style would revolutionize Russian poetry, influencing the works of young poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva.
After the Russian Revolution in October of 1917, Pasternak decided to remain in Russia, fascinated with the new ideas and possibilities that the Revolution brought to life. Filled with hope for the future, he kept writing. My Sister Life was published in 1921.
Later that year, he published Rupture, another seminal and influential poetry collection. He soon found that his innovative, modernist style of poetry was at odds with the Communist Party's doctrine of Socialist Realism.
Pasternak changed his style to make it more acceptable to the Soviet public. His next poetry collection, The Second Birth, was published in 1932. Though the poems proved to be just as brilliant as his earlier works, his new style alienated his refined readers abroad.
Throughout the decade, he would become disenchanted with Soviet communism and the totalitarian rule of Stalin. Ironically, during the purges, Stalin himself supposedly crossed Pasternak's name off an arrest list, telling his secret police, "Don't touch this cloud dweller."
A few years before the start of World War II, Boris Pasternak and his wife settled in Peredelkino, a village several miles away from Moscow that served as a writers' colony.
In 1943, he published a collection of patriotic verse titled Early Trains, which prompted his fellow writer Vladimir Nabokov to describe him as a "weeping Bolshevik" and "Emily Dickinson in trousers."
After the war ended, Pasternak resumed work on a novel that he had started writing some 30 years earlier. The 600-page epic semi-autobiographical novel would prove to be an all-time classic work of literature that made its author world famous.
Dr. Zhivago, completed in 1956, reflected Pasternak's disenchantment with Soviet communism and the totalitarian rule of Stalin. It takes place during three major events in Russian history: World War I, the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the Russian Civil War of 1917-23.
The sensitive Dr. Yuri Zhivago is a physician, poet, and idealist - a borderline mystic who finds himself living in a senseless world that is both modern and barbaric.
Dr. Zhivago embarks on a dreamlike, surreal journey through Russia. World War I is raging, and he treats wounded men at the front. He soon meets a woman, Larissa "Lara" Guishar, who becomes his great love.
Lara is engaged to Pavel "Pasha" Antipov, an idealistic young student, but she has an affair with Viktor Komarovsky, a powerful lawyer who both attracts and repels her.
The first time Zhivago meets Lara, it's a brief encounter where he assists his mentor in treating Lara's mother, who attempted suicide after learning of her affair with Komarovsky. He sees Lara again at a Christmas party where she attempts to shoot Komarovsky.
When Zhivago is later reunited with Lara at the front, where she is serving as a nurse, they fall in love while working together at a makeshift field hospital. They don't consummate their love until after the war, when they meet again in the town of Yuriatin.
Meanwhile, Lara's fiance Pasha is presumed killed in action, but he's actually a prisoner of war. He escapes from the Nazis and joins the Bolsheviks, becoming a ferocious Red Army general known for his executions of prisoners.
Pasha is nicknamed Strelnikov, which means "the shooter." He's really not a Bolshevik, he just likes to shoot prisoners and hopes that the war will end soon so he can return home to Lara.
After falling from grace and losing his position in the Red Army, Pasha returns home, hoping to find Lara waiting for him. By this time, however, she has taken off with Komarovsky. Pasha has a long talk with Dr. Zhivago, then commits suicide. The loss of Lara causes Zhivago's life to go downhill as well.
Zhivago has two children with another woman, but is haunted by his memories of Lara. He tries to write, but fails to complete any of his writing projects. He becomes absent-minded, erratic, and physically ill. Lara finally returns to Russia - on the day of Zhivago's funeral.
Dr. Zhivago raised the ire of Soviet authorities with its negative depictions of Soviet communism and the Red Army. As a result, it could not be published in the Soviet Union. So, Pasternak's friend smuggled the manuscript out of the country. It was first published in Italy in 1957.
The novel became an overnight sensation and was quickly translated into various languages and published throughout the non-communist world. From 1958 to 1959, the American edition of Dr. Zhivago spent 26 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Soviet literary critics, who never read his novel, called for Pasternak to be expelled from the Soviet Union, demanding that the authorities "kick the pig out of our kitchen-garden."
A Russian edition of Dr. Zhivago was published secretly in 1958 and circulated underground. The costs of printing and distribution were paid for in part by the American CIA.
That same year, despite pressure from Soviet authorities, the Nobel committee awarded Pasternak a Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel. He thanked them, but refused to accept the award, for fear of losing his Soviet citizenship and being exiled. Over 30 years later, Pasternak's son Yevgeny accepted the award on his father's behalf.
In 1965, a feature film adaptation of Dr. Zhivago was released. The big-budget Hollywood epic starred Omar Sharif in the title role and Julie Christie as Lara.
Featuring an all-star supporting cast and masterfully directed by David Lean, the film became a huge hit with critics and audiences, despite the fact that Robert Bolt's screenplay condensed the novel and sanitized it as per Production Code requirements.
The movie grossed more than ten times its huge budget of $11 million, or about $112 million in today's money. The score, composed by Maurice Jarre, remains one of the most popular and best selling film soundtracks, with Lara's Theme being the best loved piece.
Today, Dr. Zhivago is rightfully considered an all-time classic film. Sadly, Boris Pasternak never lived to see it. He died of lung cancer in 1960 at the age of 70.
In 2006, another adaptation of Dr. Zhivago premiered on Russian TV. It is considered more faithful to Pasternak's novel than the Hollywood movie.
Quote Of The Day
"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades."
- Boris Pasternak
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a 60-minute BBC documentary on Boris Pasternak's classic novel, Dr. Zhivago. Enjoy!
Friday, February 6, 2026
Notes for February 6th, 2026
This Day In Literary History
On February 6th, 1937, Of Mice and Men, the classic novella by the legendary American writer John Steinbeck, was published. It was one of several great novels by Steinbeck that were written and set during the Great Depression.
Of Mice and Men (the title comes from a line in a poem by legendary Scottish poet Robert Burns) told the story of two migrant farm workers, George Milton and Lennie Small. The ironically named Lennie Small is a giant of a man with incredible physical strength but very limited mental capacity.
A gentle giant with the mind of a child, Lennie's inability to understand his physical strength forms the tragic crux of the story. George Milton is the polar opposite of Lennie. Small in stature but intelligent and wise, he looks after Lennie, who is his best and only friend.
The novel opens with George and Lennie finding work on a ranch in Soledad, California. They had to flee from their previous place of employment when the affectionate Lennie's innocent petting of a young woman's dress was mistaken for attempted rape.
At the ranch, the two friends run afoul of Curley, the owner's son. Curley, a petit man like George, suffers from a Napoleon complex. He's a surly, aggressive ex-boxer who hates big men. Slim, one of the workers, befriends Lennie and gives him a puppy.
George and Lennie dream of someday having their own piece of land to farm. They've been working hard and saving their money. When they befriend Crooks, the black stable hand, he wants in on the dream, too. An educated man, he became isolated and embittered because the racist white workers want nothing to do with a black man.
Another worker who becomes George and Lennie's friend and wants in on their dream is Candy, an aging handyman who lost a hand in an accident. Candy fears that he will soon become unemployable and useless.
Meanwhile, Curley's wife, an abused yet vain woman, shamelessly flirts with all the men - except Crooks, because he's black and she's a racist. At one point, she threatens to have him lynched. When the other men ignore her advances, she belittles them.
Tragedy strikes twice when first Lennie accidentally kills his puppy by petting it too hard, then Curley's wife pays him a visit, looking for a sympathetic ear for her gripes.
The woman bemoans her loneliness and the fact that her dreams of becoming a movie star have been crushed. Lennie admires her pretty hair and she offers to let him stroke it. Once again, Lennie underestimates his own strength and is too rough with her.
Initially angry with Lennie because he's messing her hair, the woman feels his strength, panics, and screams. This causes Lennie to panic. Desperate to get her to stop screaming, he accidentally breaks her neck, killing her.
Lennie flees, and the corpse is found by the other ranch hands. A devastated George realizes that this the end of his and Lennie's dream. He meets Lennie at their secret place, where he'd told Lennie to go if there was trouble.
George talks about their dream as if nothing has happened. Then, when Lennie isn't looking, George shoots him in the back of the head, sparing him from a horrific death at the hands of Curley and his lynch mob.
Of Mice and Men received rave reviews upon its initial publication in 1937 - even more praise than John Steinbeck's other classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath - and became an all-time classic work of literature.
A staple of study for middle school English classes, the novella is often targeted for banning from the classroom and school libraries by conservative parents and pressure groups. It appears on the American Library Association's (ALA) annual lists of banned and challenged books.
Recently, the novella ranked #4 on the ALA's list of the Most Challenged Books of 21st Century. Why would anyone want to ban Of Mice and Men from schools? Complaints range from vulgar language to the promotion of leftist political views and euthanasia.
Of Mice and Men would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1939 which starred Burgess Meredith as George and Lon Chaney Jr. as Lennie. Another acclaimed feature film adaptation, released in 1992, starred Gary Sinise (who also directed) as George and John Malkovich as Lennie.
John Steinbeck originally conceived Of Mice and Men as a play in the form of a novella. It's comprised of three acts, with each act containing two chapters. Steinbeck saw it as a novella that could be acted out as a play from its dialogue or a play that read like a novella. He later adapted it as a stage play.
The character of Lennie Small was based on a real man that Steinbeck had known back when he himself worked as an itinerant laborer:
I was a bindlestiff myself for quite a spell. I worked in the same country that the story is laid in. The characters are composites to a certain extent. Lennie was a real person. He's in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn't kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw him do it. We couldn't stop him until it was too late.
In a strange and disturbing twist, the character of Lennie Small is used as the criteria for executing retarded convicts in the state of Texas. If a mentally retarded defendant is convicted of a capital offense, he is still eligible for execution if when interviewed, he appears to be smarter than Lennie Small.
John Steinbeck's son, Thomas Steinbeck, an outspoken anti-capital punishment activist, angrily protested this practice, calling it a misappropriation of and an insult to his father's work.
Quote Of The Day
"Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them."
- John Steinbeck
Vanguard Video
Today's video features a complete reading of John Steinbeck's classic novella, Of Mice and Men. Enjoy!