Happy birthday, poet T.S. Eliot

It is the birthday of poet T.S. Eliot (1888), who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 for his outstanding contribution to modern poetry. Among his best known poems are The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He also wrote seven plays, the most popular of which was Murder in the Cathedral (1935), about the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. 

Poet Derek Walcott won Nobel Prize

Derek Walcott

It is the birthday of St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott 1930), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. He is the first Caribbean poet to win the honor. Walcott also received the T.S. Eliot Prize for his book White Egrets (2010). His twin brother is playwright and screenwriter Roderick Walcott. When he was 14, Derek Walcott sent a poem to The Voice of St. Lucia newspaper. The poem's heavily Methodist themes caused quite a stir in predominantly Catholic St. Lucia.

Walcott's mother, a teacher and seamstress, recited poetry around the house.  His father died when his mother was pregnant with him and his brother. His father had painted and written poetry. When he was 19, Walcott borrowed $200 from his mother to have two volumes of poetry published. They were 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949). He sold copies to his friends and made the money back. The works are said to show influences of Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.

With a scholarship, Walcott studied at the University of the West Indies and published a volume of poetry, Poems (1951). He then moved to Trinidad, where he founded the Trinidad Theater Workshop. One of his best known works is the play Dream on Monkey Mountain. which is set in the Caribbean. it was published in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (1970). NBC broadcast the play in 1970. The Negro Ensemble Company did an off-Broadway production, which won an Obie in 1971 as best foreign play.

Walcott taught literature and writing at Boston University, where he founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre. He received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1981. He taught alongside Irish poet Seamus Heaney and Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. Walcott later said the three were a band of poets outside the American experience.

Walcott later served as scholar-in-residence at the University of Alberta and Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex. In 2009, he withdrew as a candidate for Oxford Professor of Poetry after his involvement with sexual harassment cases from 1981 and 1996 came to light. It was later revealed that rival poet Ruth Padel, who was elected to the post, had alerted the media to the cases. Padel subsequently resigned the post.

Among Walcott's other works is an epic poem, Omeros (1990), loosely based on The Iliad and The Odyssey but set in the Caribbean and Boston.

W.B. Yeats won Nobel Prize for Literature

William Butler Yeats

It is the birthday of Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865), whose body of work representing Irish literature won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He was one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which featured the work of Irish playwrights. Yeats was closely associated with the Irish Literary Renaissance, the revival of Irish literature in the late 19th and early 20th century and he is considered a leading figure in 20th century English-language literature. Some scholars consider Yeats to be representative of the transition between the centuries, similar to the way Picasso represented the transition to modern art. Still, Yeats work has little in common with such modernists Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. For a time, Pound served as secretary to Yeats. Early in his life Yeats fell in love with ardent Irish nationalist Maud Gonne. However, she turned down his proposals several times and ended up marrying someone else. They maintained a lifelong relationship. When he was 51, Yeats proposed to, Georgie Hyde-Lees, the 25-year-old friend of one of his old flames. They were married until his death in 1939 and produced two children. Yeats was fascinated with mysticism and the occult for most of his life, and he and Georgie experimented with "automatic writing," which is claimed to be influenced by  spiritual sources. Yeats is known for his use of symbolism in his work. His early writing was influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelly, Edmund Spenser, and William Blake. His poetry collections include The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robares and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940). Among his plays are The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907).

Sir Hugh Walpole was popular in '20s, '30s

Hugh Walpole

It is the birthday of English novelist Sir Hugh Walpole (1884), whose  popular historical romance, Rogue Harries (1930), is set in 1730 in Cumberland, and tells the story of Francis Herries and her family who settle in a family estate there. Subsequent novels in the series, Judith Paris (1931), The Fortress (1932) and Vanessa (1933) bring the story of the family into the 20th century. Walpole believed the novels maintained the traditions and vitality of the English novel, though it explored nothing new. Walpole was a celebrated author in the 1920s and 1930s, and was in demand as a speaker in Britain and America. Early in his career, Henry James and Joseph Conrad, among others, encouraged his work. Virginia Woolf praised his attention to detail in his writing. In his novel, Cakes and Ale (1930), Somerset Maugham depicted him as superficial and ambitious. Kenneth Clark, T.S. Eliot and J.B. Priestly were among literary giants who sponge to Walpole's defense.  Two biographies, Walpole, Sir Hugh Seymour (1884-1941) (2004) and Hugh Walpole (1952), were published after his death.