Calendar: November 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of November

The Revelation From On High

November 1st was the opening day of two of William Shakespeare’s plays.

On November 1, 1604, William Shakespeare’s tragedy play “Othello”, believed to have been written in 1603, had its first presentation in the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The story revolves around Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army, and his jealous and traitorous ensign, Iago. It is believed to be based on the story “A Moorish Captain” by Giovanni Battista Giraldi, the Italian novelist and poet. However, the story also resembles an incident in the tale “The Three Apples” from the “Arabian Nights” collection.

Shakespeare, while following the story of Giraldi, departed from it in some details, such as adding minor characters. The major departure is the death of the heroine Desdemona. In his presentation, Shakespeare has Othello kill Desdemona by suffocation, toning down the violence. In Giraldi’s story, the “Moor” bludgeons his wife to death with a sand-filled stocking, described in gruesome detail. In Shakespeare’s play, Othello, commits suicide; and in Giraldi’s tale Othello is exiled and then pursued by Desdemona’s relatives who kill him.

Later performances of “Othello” occurred in April of 1610 at the Globe Theater and at Oxford in September of 1610. It also was performed at the Blackfriars Theater in London by the King’s Men, an acting company to which Shakespeare belonged for most of his career. “Othello” was one of twenty plays performed by the King’s Men during the winter of 1612, in celebration of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, the Electorate of the Palatinate region of the Holy Roman Empire.

On November 1, 1611, Hallowmas night, Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “Tempest”, believed to have been written 1610-1611, was first presented by the King’s Men before King James I and the English royal court at Whitehall Palace. This play was also one of the twenty plays performed to celebrate Princess Elizabeth’s marriage. The next recorded performance was at the Blackfriars Theater in 1669; this is supported by the stage directions written within the play script.

The “Tempest” differs from Shakespeare’s other plays, being organized in a stricter Neo-classical style. Shakespeare in the “Tempest” observed the three rules of drama: the play’s plot should have one action that it follows, with minimal subplots; the action in the play’s plot should occur no longer than a day’s span; a play’s plot should exist in a single physical space with the stage representing that place. Shakespeare’s other plays’s plots took place in multiple separate locations and over the course of several days or years.

Calendar: October 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of October, Solar Year 2018

The Wayfarer

October 28, 1726 was the publishing date of Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”.

“Gulliver’s Travels” is a prose satire written by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, who later became Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. The book, a satire on the human nature, is Swift’s best known full-length work, written in the style of a traveler’s tale.

In 1713, Jonathan Swift joined with writers, Gay, Pope, Arbuthnot and others, to form the Scriblerus Club, an organization of writers interested in using satire in the popular genres of literature. Swift was assigned to satirize the ‘travelers’ tales’ literary genre and to write the memoirs of the club. From Swift’s correspondence, it is known that he started writing Part One and Part Two of “Gulliver’s Travels” in 1720; Part Four was written in 1723 and Part Three was written in 1724. After making amendments to the existing writing, the book was completed by August, 1725.

“Gulliver’s Travels” was an obvious satire of the Whig party, the political faction that was in control of the government at that time. It is likely that Jonathan Swift had his manuscript recopied so that his handwriting could not be used as evidence against him if the authorities wished to prosecute. This had happened to him earlier when some of his Irish pamphlets criticizing the government were seized.

In March of 1726 Jonathan Swift traveled to London and delivered his manuscript secretly to publisher Benjamin Motte, who used five printing houses to speed the printing. Motte, recognizing a best seller but fearing prosecution, cut passages and altered the worst offending ones, such as court contests and the citizen rebellion in part three. The first edition was published anonymously and released in two volumes on October 28, 1726 at the price of eight shillings.

The Irish publisher George Faulkner printed a set of Jonathan Swift’s works, which included “Gulliver’s Travels”, in 1735. The new printing of the story was done by using the manuscript given to Benjamin Motte, but without Motte’s annotations and amendments. This printing is regarded as the ‘editio princeps’ of “Gulliver’s Travels”, the first printed edition that previously existed only in manuscript form which could be circulated only after being copied by hand. The only exception to this publication of the work was an added piece by Swift, complaining of the changes done by Motte.

The book was very popular upon release and was commonly discussed within social circles. Public reception widely varied, with the book receiving an initially enthusiastic reaction with readers praising its satire, and some reporting that the satire’s cleverness sounded like a realistic account of a man’s travels. As popularity increased, critics came to appreciate the deeper aspects of “Gulliver’s Travels”. It became known for its insightful take on morality, expanding its reputation beyond just humorous satire. It was, however, sharply criticized by the Whig party.

Calendar: October 20

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of October

Working in the Heat

October 20, 1854 was the birthdate of poet Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud.

Arthur Rimbaud was born in the provincial town of Charleville, France, to a father who was a military officer and a mother lacking in a sense of humor, who Rimbaud nicknamed “Mouth of Darkness”. Rimbaud was a writer from a young age; at the age of nine, he wrote a seven hundred word essay objecting to his having to learn Latin in school. In 1865, he and his brother were sent to the Collège de Charleville where he became a highly successful student able to absorb great quantities of knowledge. In 1869 Rimbaud won eight first prizes in the French academic competitions, and in 1870 won seven first prizes.

Arthur Rimbaud’s first poem to appear in print was “Les Étrennes des Orphelins” (“The Orphans’ New Year’s Gifts”), published in the January 2, 1870 issue of “La Revue Pour Tous”. At the age of fifteen Rimbaud was salready howing maturity as a poet. His poem “Ophelie” would be included in many anthologies and is regarded as one of Rimbaud’s three or four best poems. From late October in 1870, Arthur Rimbaud’s behavior at the age of sixteen became rebellious, drinking, stealing, and writing scatological poems. His friend Charles Auguste Bretagne advised him to write to the eminent Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine.

Arthur Rimbaud sent Verlaine two letters with poems, including his hypnotic and shocking “Le Dormeur du Val”. Verlaine was intrigued and sent Rimbaud a one-way ticket to Paris. Rimbaud arrived in late September of 1871 and resided briefly with Verlaine and his pregnant wife at their home. Verlaine and Rimbaud led a wild, vagabond-style life, a short and torrid affair filled with absinthe, opium and hashish. The Paris literary circle were scandalized by Rimbaud, who still writing poetry, was considered an archetypical enfant terrible. Their stormy relationship brought them to London in September of 1872, where Verlaine abandoned Rimbaud to return to his wire.

Arthur Rimbaud eventually returned to Charleville and completed his prose work “Une Saison en Enfer”, A Season in Hell, widely regarded as a pioneer work of modern Symbolist writing. He returned to London in 1874 with the French Symbolist poet Germain Nouveau, whose work was mostly published after his death. They lived together for three months while Nouveau finished his work “Illuminations”. By March of 1875, Rimbaud had given up his writing in favor of a working and traveling life.

In February of 1891, in Aden, Rimbaud developed what he thought was arthritis in his right knee. Failing to respond to treatment, he returned to France. On arrival in Marseille,, he was admitted to the Hôspital de la Conception where, a week later on the 27th of May, his right leg was amputated. The post-operative diagnosis was bone cancer. After a short stay at the family farm in Roche, he attempted to return to Africa, but his health deteriorated. He was re-admitted to the same hospital and received last rites from a priest before dying on November 10, 1891 at the age of thirty-seven.

Calendar: October 16

A Year: Day to Day Men: 16th of October

Three Yellow Boards

October 16, 1758, was the birthdate of lexicographer Noah Webster.

Noah Webster enrolled in Yale just before his 16th birthday and graduated in 1778 with a liberal degree. After a break in his studies, Webster returned to college, studied law, and passed his bar examination in 1781. Turning to literary work to channel his ambitions, Webster wrote a series of well-received articles justifying the American Revolution and arguing for permanent separation from Britain. He then founded a private school in Goshen, New York, and, by 1785 had written his speller, a grammar book and a reader for elementary schools.

In December of 1793 Noah Webster founded New York’s first daily newspaper “American Minerva”, later known as the ‘Commercial Advertiser”, which he edited for four years and wrote the equivalent of twenty volumes of articles and editorials. As a Federalist spokesman, he defended the administrations of Washington and Adams, especially their neutral policy to Britain and France, and criticized the terror of the French Revolution.

Moving in 1798 to New Haven, Connecticut, Noah Webster was elected as a Federalist to the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1800 and again in 1802-1807. The Copyright Act of 1831 was the first major statutory revision of copyright law in the United States, a result of lobbying by Webster and his agents in Congress. He also had an important role in lobbying individual states to pass American copyright laws.

Noah Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books; so he began writing the three volume compendium “A Grammatical Institute of the English Language”: a speller published in 1783; a grammar book published in 1784; and a reader published in 1785. He believed that the people-at-large must control the language, and popular sovereignty in government must by accompanied by popular usage in language. These books were arranged so that the subjects could be easily taught to students, and each section progressed by the age of the students.

In 1806, Noah Webster published his first dictionary. In 1807 he began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, “An American Dictionary of the English Language”, a feat that took twenty-six years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-eight languages, hoping to standardize the American speech throughout the country.

Noah Webster’s dictionary contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never before appeared in a dictionary. Though it now has an honored place in the history of the American Language, it only sold 2,500 copies. By mortgaging his house, Webster found the funds to publish a second edition in two volumes, however as a result, his remaining life was plagued with debt. On May 28, 1843, a few days after revising an appendix to his work, Noah Webster died.

Calendar: September 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of September

Green Drawstring Shorts

September 21, 1866 was the birthdate of English author Herbert George Wells.

In 1890 Herbert George Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of London External Program and began teaching science.. Wells’ first published work was a “Text-Book of Biology” in two volumes in 1893. After leaving his teaching position, H. G. Wells began to write short humorous articles for journals such as “The Pall Mall Gazette”, which he later collected and published in two volumes, “Selected Conversations with an Uncle” in 1895 and “Certain Personal Matters” in 1897. His success with these shorter pieces encouraged him to write book-length work, leading to his first novel, “The Time Machine” in 1895.

H.G. Wells married Amy Robbins, one of his former students, and moved to a rented house in Woking, Surrey where they stayed for a short time. It was during this eighteen month period of time in 1895 to 1896 that he was perhaps the most productive and creative in his writing career. While staying there, Wells wrote “The War of the Worlds”, completed “The Island of Dr. Moreau”, wrote and published “The Wonderful Visit” and “The Wheels of Chance”. He also began writing two other books, “When the Sleeper Wakes” and “Love and Mr. Lewisham”.

Wells’ approach to science fiction, with his personal rules of writing, was one of the major contributions to the genre. In his opinion, the author should always strive to make the story as credible as possible, even if the reader and the writer knew certain elements were impossible, thus causing a suspension of disbelief. Wells also thought there should be a sense of realism to the concepts and the story should contain only a single extraordinary assumption. Detail was imperative and adherence to the hypothesis of the story should be rigorous.

Prior to 1933, Wells’s books were widely read in Germany and Austria, and most of his science fiction works had been translated shortly after its publication. By 1933, he had attracted the attention of German officials because of his criticism of the political situation in Germany. On May 10th of 1933, Wells’s books were burned by the Nazi Youth in Berlin’s public square, and his works were banned from libraries and book stores.

Wells, as president of Poets, Essayists and Novelists International, angered the Nazis by overseeing the expulsion of the German PEN club from the international body following the German PEN’s refusal to admit non-Aryan writers to its membership. At a PEN conference in Ragusa, Croatia, Wells refused to yield to Nazi sympathizers who demanded that the exiled Ernest Toller, a German left-wing Expressionist playwright, be prevented from speaking.

Near the end of the World War II, Allied forces discovered that the Schutzstaffel (SS) had compiled lists of people slated for immediate arrest during the invasion of Britain in the abandoned Operation Sea Hunt, with Wells included in the alphabetical list of “The Black Book” to be placed into the custody of the Gestapo.

Calendar: September 20

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of September

Afternoon’s Drawing Class

September 20, 1878, was the birthdate of American writer Upton Sinclair.

In 1904, Upton Sinclair spent seven weeks in disguise, working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants to research his next book. After its publication in 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic novel “The Jungle”, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. With the income from “The Jungle”, Sinclair founded the utopian, but non-Jewish and white-only, Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, New Jersey; this colony burned down a year later under suspicious circumstances.

In 1919, Upton Sinclair published “The Brass Check”, an exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the free press in the United States. Yellow journalism is a tern for journalism and associated news sources that present little or no legitimate well-researched news while instead use eye-catching headlines or exposé to generate sales or viewing. Four years after publication of “The Brass Check”, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.

Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes in his books the world of industrialized America from both the working man’s and the industrialist’s points of view. In his book “King Coal” published in 1917, Sinclair described the poor working conditions in the coal mining industry during the 1910s. As in his earlier work “The Jungle”, he used the novel to express his socialist view point. The 1937 “The Flivver King” described the rise of Henry Ford, his wage reform program, and the company’s Sociological Department; the book also described Ford’s decline into antisemitism.

Wanting to pursue politics, Upton Sinclair twice ran unsuccessfully for United States Congress on the Socialist ticket: in 1920 for the House of Representatives and in 1922 for the Senate. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for Governor of California during the Great Depression running under the banner of the “End Poverty in California” campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 elections.

“Do not let other people invade your personality. Remember that every human being is a unique phenomenon, and worth developing. You will meet many who have no resources of their own, and who will try to fasten themselves upon you. You will find others eager to tell you what to do and think and be. But it is better to go apart and learn to be yourself.” – Upton Sinclair

Calendar: September 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of September

Hand Over Hand

September 14, 1910 was the birthdate of Korean author Kim Hae-Gyeong, known by his pen name Yi Sang.

Yi Sang graduated in 1922 from the Gyeongseong Engineering High School with training as an architect and was employed as a draftsman in the public works department of the Governor-General of Korea. In December of 1929, Yi Sang won first prize in a design contest for the cover of “Korea and Architecture” and third prize for the cover of the journal of the Korean Architecture Society.

Yi Sang joined the “Circle of Nine” whose core members included Kim Girim, Lee Taijun and Jung Jiyong, taking the position of editor of the journal. Several of Yi Sang’s works were published in the journal, including his poems “Paper Gravestone” and “Condition Serious” and the stories “Wings”, “Meetings and Farewells”, and “Children’s Skulls”.

In November of 1936, Yi Sang went to Japan, where he was arrested by Japanese police in early 1937. This was during the time that the Korean Empire had been officially annexed by Japan with the signing of the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty. Japan officially ruled Korea, which was deprived of the administration of all its internal affairs. Yi Sang was eventually released on bail and admitted to the Tokyo University Hospital, where he died on April 17, 1937 at the age of twenty-six.

Yi Sang was perhaps the most famous avant-garde writer of the colonial era. In his work he experimented with language and interiority, the separation from inside one’s self as well as from the outer world. His poems, particularly, were influenced by Western literary concepts including Dadaism and Surrealism. Yi Sang’s history in architecture also influenced his work, which often included the languages of mathematics and architecture including, lines, dots, number systems, equations and diagrams.

Yi Sang’s literary legacy is punctuated by his modernist tendencies seen throughout his collected works. His poems reveal the desolate internal landscape of modern humanity and, as in the well known “Crow’s Eye View Poem”, utilize an anti-realist technique to show the themes of anxiety and fear. Yi Sang’s stories disjoint the form of traditional fictional writing to show the conditions of the lives of modern people. His most famous story “Wings” utilizes a stream-of-consciousness technique to express these conditions in terms of the alienation of modern people.

Yi Sang never received much recognition for his writing during his lifetime, but his works began to be reprinted in the 1950s. In the 1970s Yi Sang’s reputation soared as more people became aware of his work. The Yii Sang Literary Award, established in 1977, is sponsored by the Korean publisher Munhaksasangsa and has become one of the most prestigious literary awards in South Korea.

Calendar: August 30

A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of August

The One Budded Cross

August 30, 1797 was the birthdate of English author, Mary Shelley.

Writer Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She was the daughter of philosopher and political writer William Godwin and famed feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. While Shelley didn’t have a formal education, she did make great use of her father’s extensive library. Shelley found a creative outlet in writing.

In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father’s political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy’s child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley’s first wife, Harriet.

In 1816, Mary and Percy Shelley famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus”. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley.

In 1822, Percy Shelley drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio, in northern Tuscany, Italy. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumor that was to kill her at the age of 53 in February of 1851.

Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish her husband’s works and for her 1818 anonymously published “Frankenstein” novel, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements.

Studies of her lesser-known works support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Mary Shelley’s works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic-era ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin.

Calendar: August 25

A Year: Day to Day Men: 25th of August

Marrakesh Delicacy

Beginning on August 25, 1835, six articles about the discovery of life on the Moon are published in the New York Sun newspaper.

The Great Moon Hoax refers to the series of articles published by the Sun, describing the discovery of life and possibly civilization on the Moon. The article was attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best known astronomers of that period, and written down by Dr. Andrew Grant, the personal secretary of Herschel. The discoveries were made with an immense telescope based on an entirely new principle. Fantastic animals, including goats and bison, as well as bat-like winged humanoids were described. Ultimately, the observations were terminated with the destruction of the telescope and the observatory by the intense heat of the sun focusing through the lens of the telescope.

Authorship of the articles has been attributed to Richard Adams Locke, a reporter working for the New York Sun. Locke admitted it years later in an letter to the weekly paper “New World”. Rumors persisted that others were involved; but no evidence could be found to support that theory. Locke never gave any reasons for writing the series. His intentions were probably first to create a sensational story which would increase sales of The Sun, and, second, to ridicule some astronomical theories recently published.

In 1824, Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, Professor of Astronomy at Munich University, published a paper titled “Discovery of Many Distinct Traces of Lunar Inhabitants, Especially of One Their Colossal Buildings”. Gruithuisen claimed to have observed color on the lunar surface, indicating climate and vegetation zones, and lines and geometric shapes, indicating the existence of walls, roads, fortifications, and cities. Reverend Thomas Dick, minister and science teacher, wrote a book that computed the number of inhabitants of the solar system; the moon by his count would contain four billion inhabitants. Reverend Dick’s writings were very popular in the United States; Ralph Waldo Emerson was a fan of his book.

The story was not discovered to be a hoax for several weeks after its publication; even then, the New York Sun did not issue a retraction. Sir John Herschel was initially amused by the hoax, but grew annoyed when he had to answer questions by people who really believed the story was true. The Sun’s circulation increased dramatically because of the hoax and remained greater than before, establishing The Sun as a successful paper. The Great Moon Hoax is mentioned by characters in Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon”, published in 1865 by Pierre-Jules Hetzel.

Calendar: August 6

A Year: Day to Day Men: 6th of August

A Bed of Flowers

August 6, 1874 was the birthdate of American writer and researcher, Charles Hoy Fort.

During 1915, Charles Fort, an experienced journalist with wit and a contrarian nature, began to write two books, titled “X” and “Y”, the first dealing with the idea that beings on Mars were controlling events on Earth, and the second with the postulation of a sinister civilization in existence at the South Pole. These books caught the attention of writer Theodore Dreiser who attempted to get them published, but to no avail.

Discouraged by this failure, Charles Fort burnt the manuscripts, but was soon renewed to begin work on the book that would change the course of his life, the 1919 “The Book of the Damned”, which Dreiser helped to get published. The title referred to “damned” data that Fort collected, phenomena for which science could not account and that was thus rejected or ignored.

For more than thirty years, Charles Fort visited libraries in New York City and London, assiduously reading scientific journals, newspapers, and magazines, collecting notes on phenomena that were not explained well by the accepted theories and beliefs of the time. He marveled that seemingly unrelated bits of information were, in fact, related. The notes were kept on cards and scraps of paper in shoeboxes, in a cramped shorthand of Fort’s own invention.

From this research, Charles Fort wrote four books. These are: “The Book of the Damned” published in 1919; the 1923 “New Lands”, a theory on the Super-Sargasso Sea: “Lo!“ published in 1931 dealing with astronomy and teleportation; and the 1932 “Wild Talents” describing Fort’s new theory of psychic and mental powers.

Examples of the odd phenomena in Charles Fort’s books include many occurrences of the sort variously referred to as occult and paranormal. Reported events include: teleportation; the falling of frogs and fishes from the sky; spontaneous human combustion; ball lightning; levitation; unexplained disappearances; and giant wheels of light in the ocean, among others. His books offered many reports of out-of-place objects found in unlikely locations and out of their place in time. He was an early proponent of extraterrestrial spacecraft and the first to explain human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction.

Suffering from poor health and falling eyesight in the early 1930s , Charles Fort was pleasantly surprised to find himself the subject of a cult following. The Fortean Society was initiated at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City on January 26, 1931 by some of Fort’s friends, many who were also writers. Fort rejected the official society but met informally with many members. Distrusting doctors, Fort did not seek medical assistance for his worsening health. After he collapsed on May 3rd of 1932, he was rushed to the Royal Hospital in the Bronx, dying only hours afterward, most likely from untreated leukemia. He was interred in the family plot in Albany, New York. More than 60,000 of his handwritten notes are in the New York Public Library.

Calendar: July 29

A Year: Day to Day Men: 29th of July

Stripping Among the Cattails

July 29, 1954 was the publishing date for Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring”.

“The Lord of the Rings” started as a sequel to J. R. R. Tolkien’s work “The Hobbit”, published in 1937. The popularity of “The Hobbit” had led George Allen & Unwin, the publishers, to request a sequel. Tolkien warned them that he wrote quite slowly, and responded with several stories he had already developed; however the publishers thought more stories about hobbits would be popular. So at the age of 45, Tolkien began writing the story that would become “The Lord of the Rings”.

Persuaded by his publishers,Tolkien started the new Hobbit series in December of 1937. After several false starts, the story of the One Ring emerged. The idea for the first chapter , which became entitled “A Long-Expected Party” arrived fully formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo’s disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the series title “ The Lord of the Rings” did not arrive until the spring of 1938.

Originally, Tolkien planned to write a story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, Tolkien remembered the Ring and its powers and thought that would be a better focus for the new work. As the story progressed, he also brought in elements from his “Simarillion” mythology.

Because J.R.R. Tolkien had a full-time academic position and needed to earn further money as a university examiner, his writing on the project was slow. Tolkien abandoned writing the series during most of 1943 not restarting it until April of 1944. This spate of writing became a serial for his son Christopher, who was sent chapters as they were written while he was stationed with the Royal Air Force in South Africa. Tolkien made another concerted effort in 1946, and showed the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not complete the revision of earlier parts of the work until 1949. Finished after twelve years, the original manuscript totaled 9,250 pages.

A dispute between Tolkien and his publisher George Allen and Unwin led to the book being offered to Harper Collins Publishers in 1950. After Milton Waldman, Tolkien’s contact at Collins, expressed the belief that the book urgently needing “cutting”, Tolkien demanded that they publish it in 1952, Collins did not; so Tolkien took it back to Allen and Unwin, stating that he would consider it being published in parts.

For publication, the book was divided into three volumes to minimize any potential financial loss due to the high cost of type-setting and modest anticipated sales: “The Fellowship of the Ring“(Books I and II), “The Two Towers” (Books III and IV), and “The Return of the King”(Books V and VI plus six appendices). Delays in producing appendices, maps and especially an index led to the volumes being published later than originally hoped. The first volume of the “Fellowship of the Ring” was finally published in the United Kingdom on July 29th of 1954.

Calendar: July 18

A Year: Day to Day Men: 18th of July

Stylized Flowers

July 18, 1937 was the birthdate of American journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson.

Hunter S. Thompson carved out his niche in creative writing early in life. He was born in 1937, in Louisville, Kentucky, where his fiction and poetry earned him induction into the local Athenaeum Literary Association while he was still in high school. Thompson continued his literary pursuits in the United States Air Force, writing a weekly sports column for the base newspaper. After two years of service, Thompson endured a series of newspaper jobs, all of which ended badly, before he took to freelancing from Puerto Rico and South America for a variety of publications. The vocation quickly developed into a compulsion.

In 1967, Thompson published his first nonfiction book, “Hell’s Angels”, a harsh and incisive firsthand investigation into the infamous motorcycle gang then making the heartland of America nervous. He spent a year of research living and riding with the motorcycle gang to write the account of their experiences.

In 1970 he wrote an unconventional magazine feature entitled “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” for Scanlan’s Monthly magazine which both raised his profile and established him as a writer with counter-culture credibility. It also set him on a path to establishing his own sub-genre of New Journalism which he called “Gonzo,” which was essentially an ongoing experiment in which the writer becomes a central figure and even a participant in the events of the narrative.

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, which first appeared in Rolling Stone in November 1971, sealed Thompson’s reputation as an outlandish stylist successfully straddling the line between journalism and fiction writing. The book tells of a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream in full-tilt gonzo style, Thompson’s hilarious first-person approach, and is accented by British illustrator Ralph Steadman’s appropriate drawings.

Thompson completed “The Rum Diary”, his only novel published to date, before he turned twenty-five. Bought by Ballantine Books, the novel was finally published to glowing reviews in 1998. The story, written when Thompson was twenty-two, involves a journalist who, in the 1950s, moves from New York to work for a major newspaper in Puerto Rico. It was Thompson’s second novel, preceded by the still-unpublished “Prince Jellyfish”.

Calendar: July 17

A Year: Day to Day Men: 17th of July

Two Birch Trees

July 17, 1889 was the birthdate of American detective writer Erle Stanley Gardner.

Erle Stanley Gardner, as a lawyer, enjoyed litigation and the development of trial strategy but was otherwise bored by legal practice. In his spare time, he began writing for pulp magazines; his first story was published in 1923. Gardner created many series characters for the pulps, including the ingenious Lester Leith, a parody of the “gentleman thief”; and Ken Corning, crusading lawyer, crime sleuth, and archetype for his most successful creation, Perry Mason.

While the Perry Mason novels did not delve into their characters lives very much, the novels were rich in plot detail which was reality-based and drawn from Gardner’s own experience. In his early years writing for the pulp magazine market, Gardner set himself a quota of 1,200,000 words a year. With the success of the Perry Mason book series, which eventually ran to over 80 novels, Gardner gradually reduced his contributions to the pulp magazines until the medium itself died in the 1950s.

Gardner created Perry Mason as a recurring character in a series of Hollywood films of the 1930s, and then for the radio program “Perry Mason” which ran from 1943 to 1955. In 1954, CBS proposed transforming the radio program into a television soap opera; but Gardner opposed the idea. In 1957, “Perry Mason” became instead a long-running CBS-TV drama series, starring Raymond Burr in the title role. Burr had auditioned for the role of the district attorney Hamilton Burger; but Gardner reportedly declared he was the embodiment of Perry Mason. The series’ last episode was “The Case of the Final Fade-Out” in 1966 with a cameo appearance of Gardner as a judge.

Gardner devoted thousands of hours to “The Court of Last Resort”, in collaboration with his many friends in the forensic, legal, and investigative communities. The project sought to review, and when appropriate, reverse miscarriages of justice against criminal defendants who had been convicted because of poor legal representation, abuse, misinterpretation of forensic evidence, or careless or malicious actions of police or prosecutors. The resulting 1952 book earned Gardner his only Edgar Award, in the Best Fact Crime category, and was later made into a TV series.

Gardner died in March of 1970 at his ranch in Temecula- the best-selling American writer of the 20th century at the time of his death. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds Gardner’s manuscripts, art collection, and personal effects. From 1972 to 2010, the Ransom Center featured a full-scale reproduction of Gardner’s study that displayed original furnishings, personal memorabilia, and artifacts.

Stanley Borack

Illustrations by Stanley Borack

Born in Brooklyn, Stanley Borack served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and studied art at the Art Students League of New York under the G.I. Bill. He began his career as professional illustrator in 1950 and, up until he retired at the end of the 1970s, he did hundreds of covers for pulp magazines and paperback book publishers. Among collectors, he is especially known for the racy covers he did for Ted Mark’s Man From O.R.G.Y. series. After retirement, his spent his remaining years doing painting of the Old West for fine art galleries across the country.

Calendar: June 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of June

The Toucan in the Forest

June 14, 1933 was the birthdate of Józef Lewinkopf, a Polish-American novelist known by the name Jerzy Kosinski.

Józef Lewinkopf was born to Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosinski, which his father gave to him. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance, often at great risk. After the war ended, Kosinski and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra, in southwestern Poland.

By the age of twenty-two, Jeerzy Kosinski had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Lodz. He became an associate professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In order to immigrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him. In the United States Kosinski worked odd jobs to get by, eventually graduating from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965.

Kosinski’s first novel was the controversial “The Painted Bird”, published in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. The story originally introduced as being autobiographical was the story of a World War II boy wandering around Eastern Europe. Assumed by reviewers to be a memoir of a Jewish survivor to the Holocaust, the book received enthusiastic revews. However, within twenty years it was discovered to be fictional. The book was banned in Poland from its publication until the fall of the communist government in 1989. When it was finally printed in Poland, thousands of Warsaw residents waited as long as eight hours for an autographed copy.

Kosinski’s 1970 novel, “Being There” was one of his most significant works. It was a satirical view of the absurd reality of America’s media culture. It is the story of Chance the gardener, a man of few distinctive qualities who emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes the heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon and a presidential policy advisor. His simple and straight forward responses to popular concerns are praised as visionary despite the fact that no one actually understands what he is really saying. “Being There” was made into a movie in 1979 and starred Peter Sellers as the gardener Chance and Shirley MacLaine as Eve Rand, the wife of the business tycoon who advises the President..

Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses toward the end of his life, and he was under attack from journalists who accused him of plagiarism. By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat, as well as severe physical and nervous exhaustion. He committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by ingesting a lethal amount of alcohol and drugs, and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, suffocating to death. His suicide note read: “I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity.”