Happy birthday, Honoré de Balzac

It is the birthday of French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799), whose multi-volume collection of short stories, The Human Comedy (1815-1848), is renowned for his realistic depiction of life in France after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. His influence on literature is considerable. Among later novelists who considered him an inspiration were Proust, Zola, Dickens, Poe, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Henry James. Faulkner, Kerouac. Balzac wrote of life in France after the Revolution, money, power and social success, family relationships including motherhood and fatherhood, women in society and sex. His writing included elements of historical novels, popular novels,  fantasy novels, gothic novels, and metaphysical novels. 

Poet Baudelaire was banned in France

It is the birthday of French poet Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821), one of the first poets to write about urban grittiness of 19th century Paris at a time when most poets were steeped in nature and pastoral settings. His Flowers of Evil (1857) dealt with eroticism and decadence, and was banned in France until 1949. Given their mutual interest in depravity, madness and crime, it's no wonder that Baudelaire became fascinated with the dark works Edgar Allan Poe, and translated them. The translations are regarded as classics in French literature.

Ann Radcliffe perfected Gothic novels

Ann Radcliffe

It is the birthday of English writer Ann Radcliffe (1764), who is credited with perfecting the Gothic novel with vivid descriptions of settings, supernatural elements and a well reasoned explanation at the end of all the strange events in the story.

Radcliffe is said to have been a beautiful woman but very private. Little is known of the details of her life. Scholars say her husband was the editor and co-owner of a newspaper. It is said that he often worked late and that she occupied herself with her writing, which she read to him when he came home.

She wrote only six novels:

The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789). A novel of intrigue among Scottish nobility set in ruined medieval castles along the rugged Scottish coastline. The castles themselves are key elements in the story.

A Sicilian Romance (1790). A monk relates the story of a doomed aristocratic Italian family and its shameful secrets. But all ends happily.

The Romance of the Forest (1791). A Frenchman and his wife and two servants flee his creditors in Paris and end up in a ruined abbey with a beautiful young woman and, later, the couple's son. Terrifying events occur, a great secret is revealed and all is right in the end. This was Radcliffe's first popular novel, and established her reputation. She and her husband traveled extensively on the earnings from her writing.

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Set in the mountains of southern France and northern italy, this is the story of a young French woman whose father dies, her trials at the hands of an Italian bandit, her romance with a dashing young hero, and the revelation of secrets about her father. A character in Jane Austin's novel Northanger Abbey reads this book and begins to see her friends as characters in a Gothic novel in a send-up of Radcliffe's work. (Radcliffe appears as a friend encouraging Jane Austin to write in the movie Becoming Jane, though scholars say there is no evidence such a meeting took place.)

The Italian (1797). Set during the French Revolution, this is a novel of romance and intrigue and persecution.  The was the last book published in Radcliffe's lifetime.

Gaston De Blondeville (1826). This is a story of murder and intrigue set in the 13th century in the court of King Henry III. Radcliffe's husband published it after her death.

In addition to Austin, Radcliffe's work also influenced Sir Walter Scott, Marquis de Sade and Edgar Allan Poe.

He wrote 'It was a dark and stormy night'

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

It is the birthday of Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803), who may have been the master of the cliché, though he certainly didn't start out that way. Bulwer-Lytton is credited with the phrases "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "it was a dark and stormy night," among others, and was satirized by Edgar Allan Poe, Madeleine L'Engle and even Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip. Bulwer-Lytton served as a member of Parliament, and at one time was Secretary of State for the Colonies, but it is his writing for which he is most remembered. He made a considerable fortune turning out quite popular dime novels. It's a good thing he was successful as a writer. His mother cut off his allowance when he married an Irish beauty, Rosina Wheeler, against her wishes. He had a tempestuous private life. His marriage to Rosina ended in divorce after his indiscretions. Rosina published a fictional version of their life that bordered on libel. When he ran for Parliament, his ex denounced him publicly and he retaliated with vengeance. He threatened her publisher, refused to let her visit their children, cut off her allowance and, eventually, had her committed to a mental institution. She was released after a few weeks and much public outrage. She continued public ridicule of her ex-husband and wrote of his attacks in her memoir, A Blighted Life (1880). As popular as he was in his own time, his writing has spawned a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in which contestants submit opening lines in the vein of the author's Paul Clifford (1830): "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." Snoopy, where are you when we need you?

Happy birthday, Washington Irving

Washington Irving

It is the birthday of historian and author Washington Irving (1783), who is best known for his short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, though he also wrote biographies of Muhammad, Oliver Goldsmith and George Washington as well as books on the Moors of Spain, the Alhambra and Christopher Columbus. Irving's work was popular in Europe and he may have been the first American best-selling author. he was a favorite of Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell and Sir Walter Scott. He offered encouragement to such American literary luminaries as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving's nephew, Theodore Irving, wrote Conquest of Florida, a history of Florida under Hernando de Soto.