James Arthur Baldwin, born August 2, 1924 to a Mr. and Mrs. David and Bertis Baldwin, was raised in Harlem, though his parents had lived in the deep south. “If they had waited two more seconds I might have been born in the south”, Baldwin once remarked.
Life for African-American … Read the rest
Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born in an estate on the Russian countryside on August 28, 1828 (old style). He was the fourth child of five in a wealthy and noble family, and held the title of “Count” from birth.
His mother died when he was two years old, but his … Read the rest
You have only to look at Solomin. A head as clear as the day and a body as strong as an ox. Isn’t that a wonder in itself? Why, any man with us in Russia who has had any brains, or feelings, or a conscience, has always been a physical … Read the rest
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born in the Ukraine in 1809, only two months after the birth of Edgar Allan Poe across the world. He was a natural observer of the Russian and Ukranian people (the Ukraine was then part of the Russian empire), and his first story, ‘Evenings on a … Read the rest
“They talk of democracy, freedom, fairness. Those are the words of cowards. The ones who will listen to a thousand viewpoints and try to satisfy them all. Victory comes through absolute power and power through strength. They have lost!
Davros in The Genesis of the Daleks
Born on the 5th … Read the rest
Born January 17 (old style) 1860, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was raised in Tanganrog, near the Sea of Arzov. He was from a humbler background than any other great Russian author, the son of a grocer and the grandson of a serf.
Chekhov studied medicine at the University of Moscow, and … Read the rest
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman (the chairmen of Transcendentalism) wrote from personal insights gained through direct experience. Nathaniel Hawthorne painted portraits of America’s colonial past. Dissatisfied with the stagnating, etiquette-ridden culture of his time, he wrote of the plight of the Native American, the … Read the rest
Born Edward J. Hughes near Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire on August 16, 1930, Ted Hughes is perhaps most widely known for having married the tragic and iconic poet Sylvia Plath. However, Hughes is an important poet in his own right. His dynamic realism and almost childlike honesty reveres innocence, individual expression … Read the rest
In terms of years, William Blake was the first bohemian. However, without Edgar Allan Poe the bohemian movement quite simply would not have flourished.
The original decadent was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. The family was anything but happy, and in Edgar’s second year his father deserted the … Read the rest