Happy birthday, Zora Neale Hurston

The Google Doodle today honors the 123rd birthday of Florida writer Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), the acclaimed story of the coming of age of a young woman in Central and South Florida in the 1920s. Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama. Her family moved to Eatonville, near Orlando, when she was a child. She always claimed Eatonville has her hometown. Here's a link to an article in the Orlando Sentinel today about Zora Neale Hurston. Here's a link to the Google Doodle page.

Happy birthday, Sherlock Holmes

It is the birthday of the world's greatest fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, according to the analysis of novelist and editor Christopher Morley, founder of the Baker Street Irregulars, a society of Holmes devotees. For decades, fans with perhaps too much time on their hands have analyzed the four novels and 56 short stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to clarify such implied details as Holmes birthday and year (both 1854 and 1861 are offered), when he was at university (and whether it was Oxford or Cambridge), and the sleuth's mental health (some say he was manic depressive, others suggest Asperger's syndrome or severe family drama.) It's all great fun for fans of the most enduring crime solver of all time.

Happy birthday, Max Eastman

It is the birthday of writer and radical activist Max Eastman (1883), a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and co-founder of the radical magazine The Liberator in 1919. Earlier, as editor of the socialist magazine The Masses, Eastman stood trial twice on charges of sedition for editorials critical of U.S. participation in World War I. He was acquitted both times. The Liberator published works of John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, and E.E. Cummings. Eastman visited Russia in the 1920s and later wrote critically of Joseph Stalin, though he supported Leon Trotsky. Later in life, he became fiercely anti-socialist and anti-communist, and an outspoken conservative.

Happy birthday, fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien

It is the birthday of English writer J.R.R. Tolkien (1892), who is best remembered for his classic fantasies The Hobbit (1937) and the three-volume sequel, The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955).  As a youngster, he made up languages with his cousins, and a hike across Switzerland when he was 18 years old inspired Bilbo Baggins' journey in The Hobbit. He served as a young officer in France during World War I. After the war, he worked for Oxford English Dictionary researching the etymology of words, and later, taught at Oxford's Pembroke College. That is where he wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, which is the second best-selling novel ever written, after Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. The Hobbit is sixth.