Status Updates From A Reader's Book of Days: Tr...

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Judi
is on page 350 of 448
November 5
NO YEAR The fires of Bonfire Night, lit across the Wessex heath, give a pagan glow to the opening and closing of Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native. In the opening chapters, Eustacia Vye, the restless and bewitching "Queen of the Night," presides over the final bonfire of the evening, with which she hopes to draw a former lover, Dennis Wildeve, away from his marriage to another.
— Nov 26, 2024 10:31AM
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NO YEAR The fires of Bonfire Night, lit across the Wessex heath, give a pagan glow to the opening and closing of Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native. In the opening chapters, Eustacia Vye, the restless and bewitching "Queen of the Night," presides over the final bonfire of the evening, with which she hopes to draw a former lover, Dennis Wildeve, away from his marriage to another.

Judi
is on page 349 of 448
November 4
1911 The Athenaeum on Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson: "this is the wittiest and most amusing of extravaganzas."
— Nov 26, 2024 08:23AM
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1911 The Athenaeum on Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson: "this is the wittiest and most amusing of extravaganzas."

Judi
is on page 348 of 448
November 3
1792 ... De Gourges transformed herself from a small-town butcher's daughter into a wealthy and sophisticated Parisian socialite, playwright, and political activist, culminating in her "Declaration of the Rights of Women," which, with pointed irony, exposed the absence of women in the French Revolution's doctrine of universal equality, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man."
— Nov 26, 2024 04:57AM
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1792 ... De Gourges transformed herself from a small-town butcher's daughter into a wealthy and sophisticated Parisian socialite, playwright, and political activist, culminating in her "Declaration of the Rights of Women," which, with pointed irony, exposed the absence of women in the French Revolution's doctrine of universal equality, the "Declaration of the Rights of Man."

Judi
is on page 347 of 448
November 2
1938 Malcolm and Jan Lowry arrived in Mexico for the first time on October 30, 1936, though Malcolm, superstitious, liked to say it was three days later, on the Day of the Dead. The new day Malcolm, whose alcoholism had already led him to check into Bellevue Hospital in New York in May, had his first test of mescal; by the middle of the month they had settled in the resort town of Cuernavaca...
— Nov 26, 2024 04:37AM
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1938 Malcolm and Jan Lowry arrived in Mexico for the first time on October 30, 1936, though Malcolm, superstitious, liked to say it was three days later, on the Day of the Dead. The new day Malcolm, whose alcoholism had already led him to check into Bellevue Hospital in New York in May, had his first test of mescal; by the middle of the month they had settled in the resort town of Cuernavaca...

Judi
is on page 346 of 448
November 1
1755 Would it be too much to say that the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Lisbon, which levelled one of the great cities of Europe and killed a fifth of its inhabitants, laid equal waste to European philosophy? Hundreds of writers attempted to make sense o the quake, including the young Immanuel Kant, who, unlike most, blamed the upheaval on geological forces rather than God...
— Nov 25, 2024 01:03PM
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1755 Would it be too much to say that the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Lisbon, which levelled one of the great cities of Europe and killed a fifth of its inhabitants, laid equal waste to European philosophy? Hundreds of writers attempted to make sense o the quake, including the young Immanuel Kant, who, unlike most, blamed the upheaval on geological forces rather than God...

Judi
is on page 342 of 448
October 31
1615 ...Cervantes, meanwhile, told advantage of being second by adding a scene in Don Quixote and Sancho Panza themselves mock the fake sequel. In the second book's dedication, written on this day, he mentioned "the loathing and disgust caused bh another Don Quixote," and in the book's preface he completed his revenge humbly declining to abuse his usurper, he instead told a tale of a madman...
— Nov 25, 2024 05:24AM
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1615 ...Cervantes, meanwhile, told advantage of being second by adding a scene in Don Quixote and Sancho Panza themselves mock the fake sequel. In the second book's dedication, written on this day, he mentioned "the loathing and disgust caused bh another Don Quixote," and in the book's preface he completed his revenge humbly declining to abuse his usurper, he instead told a tale of a madman...

Judi
is on page 341 of 448
1772 "At that moment, Goeth later wrote, "the plan of 'Werther' was formed...just as water in a vessel, which stands upon the point of freezing, is converted into hard ice by the most gentle shake." The Sorrows of Young Werther became the sensation of the Romantic age, sparking copycat suicides, a fashion for blue coats and yellow breeches, and, once word got out about its author's inspiration, pilgrimages...
— Nov 24, 2024 06:11PM
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Judi
is on page 341 of 448
October 30
1772 On October 29, Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, a young German law student who favored a blue coat and yellow breeches and had developed an affection for the wife of a friend, shot himself; he died the next day. A few days later the news reached an acquaintance of his, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who had been struggling to put his own flirtation with suicide into words after a similar unrequited love.
— Nov 24, 2024 06:08PM
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1772 On October 29, Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, a young German law student who favored a blue coat and yellow breeches and had developed an affection for the wife of a friend, shot himself; he died the next day. A few days later the news reached an acquaintance of his, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who had been struggling to put his own flirtation with suicide into words after a similar unrequited love.

Judi
is on page 340 of 448
October 29
1692 Daniel Dafoe...His losses accumulated, however, and with the cats already seized for nonpayment, his creditors had him committed to the Fleet Prison with £17,000 in debts. He negotiate with his creditors to secure his release, but for the rest of his life they hounded him for the debts, even after he left business behind for the new and more successful profession of authorship.
— Nov 24, 2024 07:24AM
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1692 Daniel Dafoe...His losses accumulated, however, and with the cats already seized for nonpayment, his creditors had him committed to the Fleet Prison with £17,000 in debts. He negotiate with his creditors to secure his release, but for the rest of his life they hounded him for the debts, even after he left business behind for the new and more successful profession of authorship.

Judi
is on page 339 of 448
October 28
1910 At eighty-two, oppressed by the rivalry between his wife and his disciples and unhappy with the luxury in which the all lived, Leo Tolstoy stole away from his rural estate in the darkness of the early morning , leaving a note to his wife, Sophia, asking "to live the last days of my life in peace and solitude."
— Nov 23, 2024 07:39AM
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1910 At eighty-two, oppressed by the rivalry between his wife and his disciples and unhappy with the luxury in which the all lived, Leo Tolstoy stole away from his rural estate in the darkness of the early morning , leaving a note to his wife, Sophia, asking "to live the last days of my life in peace and solitude."

Judi
is on page 338 of 448
October 27
A short visit back to Dublin from Trieste made James Joyce eager to return to exile: "I feel proud to think that my son...will always be a foreigner in Ireland, a man seeking another language and bred in a different tradition. I loath Ireland and the Irish. They themselves stare at me in the street though I was born among them. Perhaps they read my hatred of them in my eyes."
— Nov 22, 2024 02:28PM
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A short visit back to Dublin from Trieste made James Joyce eager to return to exile: "I feel proud to think that my son...will always be a foreigner in Ireland, a man seeking another language and bred in a different tradition. I loath Ireland and the Irish. They themselves stare at me in the street though I was born among them. Perhaps they read my hatred of them in my eyes."

Judi
is on page 337 of 448
October 26
1849 When the time came for Flaubert to set off with his friend Maxime Du Camp for his long-imagined trip to Greece and Egypt, he nearly balked at the idea of leaving his mother for the two-year journey. The day they parted was "atrocious," " the worst I have ever spent"; finally he just kissed her and dashed away, listening to her screams from behind the door he shut behind him...
— Nov 21, 2024 12:53PM
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1849 When the time came for Flaubert to set off with his friend Maxime Du Camp for his long-imagined trip to Greece and Egypt, he nearly balked at the idea of leaving his mother for the two-year journey. The day they parted was "atrocious," " the worst I have ever spent"; finally he just kissed her and dashed away, listening to her screams from behind the door he shut behind him...

Judi
is on page 336 of 448
October 25
1859 George Eliot read Balzac's Père Griot, "a hateful book."
— Nov 21, 2024 04:48AM
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1859 George Eliot read Balzac's Père Griot, "a hateful book."

Judi
is on page 335 of 448
October 24
1911 ... At first the Leipzig teens planned that the one whose writing was judged inferior (by a third party) would be shot, but then they decided instead to stage a suicide pact as if it were a duel over a girl. Ditzen survived the shots, Neker didn't, and on this day Ditzen was arrested for murder. The charges were dropped, but the scandal was still fresh enough that when he published his first novel...
— Nov 20, 2024 12:48PM
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1911 ... At first the Leipzig teens planned that the one whose writing was judged inferior (by a third party) would be shot, but then they decided instead to stage a suicide pact as if it were a duel over a girl. Ditzen survived the shots, Neker didn't, and on this day Ditzen was arrested for murder. The charges were dropped, but the scandal was still fresh enough that when he published his first novel...

Judi
is on page 334 of 448
October 23
1847 ... (They were waiting for the next instalment of Vanity Fair, just then making Thackeray a literary celebrity as it was serialized in Punch.) "It is a woman's writing, but whose?" he speculated. In turn, when the second edition of Jane Eyre appears, Charlotte Brontë (still writing as Currer Bell) dedicated it to Thackeray,...
— Nov 20, 2024 08:54AM
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1847 ... (They were waiting for the next instalment of Vanity Fair, just then making Thackeray a literary celebrity as it was serialized in Punch.) "It is a woman's writing, but whose?" he speculated. In turn, when the second edition of Jane Eyre appears, Charlotte Brontë (still writing as Currer Bell) dedicated it to Thackeray,...

Judi
is on page 333 of 448
October 22
1942 ... "He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naif, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking,..Do I, for God's sake, sound like that?" Despite this disdain, within a year Chandler was under contract to sound like Cain, as the co-writer of Billy Wilder's adaptation of Cain's Double Indemnity,...
— Oct 25, 2024 07:55AM
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1942 ... "He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naif, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking,..Do I, for God's sake, sound like that?" Despite this disdain, within a year Chandler was under contract to sound like Cain, as the co-writer of Billy Wilder's adaptation of Cain's Double Indemnity,...

Judi
is on page 332 of 448
October 21
1920 ...a prosperous and respectable Edwardian who once hinted to his son that "in the matter of sex there was nothin he had not done, no experience he hadn't tasted." Only after his death was that revealed to include bigamy: he left his son two letters, the first dated on this day, that confessed he had a second family, including three children who knew him only as Uncle Bodger.
— Oct 24, 2024 09:13AM
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1920 ...a prosperous and respectable Edwardian who once hinted to his son that "in the matter of sex there was nothin he had not done, no experience he hadn't tasted." Only after his death was that revealed to include bigamy: he left his son two letters, the first dated on this day, that confessed he had a second family, including three children who knew him only as Uncle Bodger.

Judi
is on page 331 of 448
October 20
NO YEAR .. In fact she resides in, of all places, Thornfield Hall, and Rochester's thwarted second bride, Jane Eyre, is about to be introduced to her. Charlotte Brontë said little more about this earlier marriage in Jane Eyre, but in Wide Sargasso Sea Jean res imagined the story of the first Mrs. Rochester and their doomed wedding, which in her telling Rochester greets with the words "So it was all over."
— Oct 24, 2024 07:34AM
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NO YEAR .. In fact she resides in, of all places, Thornfield Hall, and Rochester's thwarted second bride, Jane Eyre, is about to be introduced to her. Charlotte Brontë said little more about this earlier marriage in Jane Eyre, but in Wide Sargasso Sea Jean res imagined the story of the first Mrs. Rochester and their doomed wedding, which in her telling Rochester greets with the words "So it was all over."

Judi
is on page 330 of 448
October 19
1908 ... And before Aracantaca there was the dark moon in the family history, when Colonel Marquez killed another man in a "matter of honor" in a manner that may not have been honorable. The details were hazy—was his vicim armed or not?but the outcome was clear: the colonel was force to leave town and make his fortune on the other side of the mountains...
— Oct 23, 2024 09:03AM
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1908 ... And before Aracantaca there was the dark moon in the family history, when Colonel Marquez killed another man in a "matter of honor" in a manner that may not have been honorable. The details were hazy—was his vicim armed or not?but the outcome was clear: the colonel was force to leave town and make his fortune on the other side of the mountains...

Judi
is on page 329 of 448
October 18
1859 Nine years after she stayed with the Swiss painter Françiois d'Albert Durade while depressed after her father's death, George Eliot wrote to him of her success as a novelist, so he would know "that one whom you knew when she was not very happy and when her life seemed to serve no purpose o much worth, has been at last blessed with the sense that she has done something worth living and suffering for."
— Oct 22, 2024 02:20PM
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1859 Nine years after she stayed with the Swiss painter Françiois d'Albert Durade while depressed after her father's death, George Eliot wrote to him of her success as a novelist, so he would know "that one whom you knew when she was not very happy and when her life seemed to serve no purpose o much worth, has been at last blessed with the sense that she has done something worth living and suffering for."

Judi
is on page 328 of 448
October 17
1945 On this day Ava Gardner became the fifth wife of the clarinet-playing lothario Artie Shaw, who put the scarlet on a reading program so she might be worthy of the frequently bestowed title of '"Mrs. Artie Shaw": The Brothers Karamazov, Babbitt, Tropic of Cancer and The Origin of Species. But he'd deny the story Gardner later loved to tell,...
— Oct 21, 2024 06:42AM
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1945 On this day Ava Gardner became the fifth wife of the clarinet-playing lothario Artie Shaw, who put the scarlet on a reading program so she might be worthy of the frequently bestowed title of '"Mrs. Artie Shaw": The Brothers Karamazov, Babbitt, Tropic of Cancer and The Origin of Species. But he'd deny the story Gardner later loved to tell,...

Judi
is on page 327 of 448
October 16
1933 Evicted from her Florida apartment for unpaid back rent of $18, Zora Neale Hurston received a wire from Lippincott offering her a $200 advance for her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine" "I never expect to have a greater thrill than that wire gave me. You know the feeling when you found your first pubic hair. Greater than that."
— Oct 20, 2024 09:51AM
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1933 Evicted from her Florida apartment for unpaid back rent of $18, Zora Neale Hurston received a wire from Lippincott offering her a $200 advance for her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine" "I never expect to have a greater thrill than that wire gave me. You know the feeling when you found your first pubic hair. Greater than that."

Judi
is on page 326 of 448
October 15
1764... "It was at Rome on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City fist started to my mind." Some later historians have been skeptical of the exactness of this memory, which he didn't describe until thirty years later,...
— Oct 19, 2024 12:15PM
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1764... "It was at Rome on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City fist started to my mind." Some later historians have been skeptical of the exactness of this memory, which he didn't describe until thirty years later,...

Judi
is on page 325 of 448
October 14
1667 ... Over time, his skills increased to where his fame as a lens grinder approached his infamy as the "atheist Jew"; in a letter on this day, Christiaan Huygens, the discoverer of Saturn's moon Titan, praise the lenses of "the Jew of Voorburg" for their "admirable polish"....
— Oct 19, 2024 06:31AM
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1667 ... Over time, his skills increased to where his fame as a lens grinder approached his infamy as the "atheist Jew"; in a letter on this day, Christiaan Huygens, the discoverer of Saturn's moon Titan, praise the lenses of "the Jew of Voorburg" for their "admirable polish"....

Judi
is on page 324 of 448
October 13
1819"...—I have shudder'd at it—I shudder no more—I could die for you." A few days later, it is thought, he gave her a ring to seal their secret engagement. It's also speculated that this was the same week he found more disciplined language for his love in the sonnet that begins "Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art," which for two centuries since has set its readers to swooning.
— Oct 17, 2024 09:29AM
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1819"...—I have shudder'd at it—I shudder no more—I could die for you." A few days later, it is thought, he gave her a ring to seal their secret engagement. It's also speculated that this was the same week he found more disciplined language for his love in the sonnet that begins "Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art," which for two centuries since has set its readers to swooning.