Carter Brown wrote pulp fiction mysteries

It is the birthday of England-born, Australia-raised writer Alan Geoffrey Yeats (1923), whose 1950s pulp fiction novels under the pseudonym Carter Brown became international bestsellers. He wrote 322 in the series. His books were translated in to 14 languages. Most of the books were set in California and featured a variety of heroes, including a Hollywood screenwriter, a scatterbrained private detective, a San Francisco lawyer, and a policeman in a tiny east California ex-mining town. Yeats wrote many of the early novels having never visited the United States. The formula plots always included an attractive, dangerous woman, sex, violence, and humor.

Happy birthday, J.K.Rowling

It is the birthday of popular British writer J.K. Rowling (1965), who created the best-selling Harry Potter series. Her books have sold 400 million copies worldwide and she is among the wealthiest women in the United Kingdom. While she was writing the series she was divorced, recovering from the death of her mother, and a single parent living on public assistance. There are seven books in the series, the first of which was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997). Last year, she published a crime fiction novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, under the pen name Robert Galbraith. She said it was liberating to avoid the hoopla and get feedback under another name. The book sold modestly until The Sunday Times revealed the author’s real name, then it shot to No. 1.

Emily Bronte was a one-hit wonder

It is the birthday of English writer Emily Bronte (1818), whose only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), wasn’t published under her name originally. She used the pen name Ellis Bell. She died at age 30, the year after the book was published. Her sister, Charlotte, published a second edition after Emily’s death.  Although it wasn’t universally well received initially because of its depiction of physical and mental cruelty, and unbridled passion, today it is considered classic English literature.

Don Marquis created archy and mehitabel

It is the birthday of humorist Don Marquis (1878), who created archy and mehitabel, the cockroach with the soul of a free verse poet and his alley cat sidekick. The social commentary duo started as a newspaper column in The New York Evening Sun in 1916 and eventually were presented in numerous books, illustrated by George Herriman, who illustrated the cartoon Krazy Kat for Hearst newspapers. The archy and mehitabel series was part of popular culture during the rest of the teens and 1920s. Marquis claimed that he left paper in his typewriter at night and archy jumped on the keys to write his messages. He couldn’t operated the shift key so everything he wrote was in lowercase. Below is an example. Archy seems to have anticipated texting.

listen to me there have
been some doings here since last
i wrote there has been a battle
behind that rusty typewriter cover
in the corner
you remember freddy the rat well
freddy is no more but
he died game the other
day a stranger with a lot of
legs came into our
little circle a tough looking kid
he was with a bad eye