Scottish author Jane Porter died - 1850

Scottish novelist and playwright Jane Porter died on May 24, 1850. She was born in Durham, Scotland on January 17, 1776. Porter was an avid reader and was said to have to rise at four in the morning in order to read and write.  Her preoccupied demeanor earned her the nickname 'La Penserosa', possibly a reference recalling the poem Il Penseroso by John Milton, meaning 'a brooding or melancholy person or personality'. After her father's death, the Porter family moved to Edinburgh, where Walter Scott was a regular visitor. Sometime later the family moved to London, where Jane and her sisters became acquainted with a number of literary women chief among them were Elizabeth Inchbald, Hannah More, and Elizabeth Hamilton. All helped influence Porter to write.

Porter’s first novel Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) is one of the earliest examples of the historical novel, and it went through a dozen editions. The book was based on Polish-refugee eyewitness accounts of the doomed Polish independence struggle of the 1790s. Her next book The Scottish Chiefs (1810) was about Scottish national hero William Wallace. The book was a success but the French version was banned by Napoleon. Other noteworthy works include The Pastor's Fireside (1815), Tales Round a Winter Hearth (1821), Coming Out (1828), The Field of Forty Footsteps (1828), and Sir Edward Seaward's Diary (1831) Porter also wrote two plays Switzerland (1819) and Owen, Prince of Powys (1822) and contributed to various periodicals.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends. The book can be purchased from Amazon through the following links:

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on this date in 1859

Novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Conan Doyle is best known as the creator of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he met Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher with extraordinary deductive reasoning power. Bell partly inspired Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes years later. After medical school, Doyle moved to London; where his slow medical practice left him ample free time to write. His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. Starting in 1891, a series of Holmes stories appeared in The Strand magazine. Holmes enabled Doyle to leave his medical practice in 1891 and devote himself to writing, but the author soon grew weary of his creation. In The Final Problem, he killed off both Holmes and his nemesis, Dr. Moriarty, only to resuscitate Holmes later due to popular demand. In 1902, Doyle was knighted for his work with a field hospital in South Africa. In addition to dozens of Sherlock Holmes stories and several novels, Doyle wrote history, pursued whaling, and engaged in many adventures and athletic endeavors. After his son died in World War I, Doyle became a dedicated spiritualist. He died on July 7, 1930 in Crowborough, East Sussex, England. 

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends. The book can be purchased from Amazon through the following links:

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English poet & Bishop Thomas Sprat died - 1713

English poet Thomas Sprat died on May 20, 1713 in Bromley, Kent, England. He was born in 1635 in Beaminster, Dorset. England and educated at Oxford, where he held a fellowship from 1657 to 1670. Having taken orders and became the canon of Lincoln Cathedral in 1660. In the preceding year he had gained a reputation by his poem To the Happie Memory of the most Renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector (1659), and he was afterwards well known as a wit, preacher and man of letters. 

His chief prose works are the Observations upon Monsieur de Sorbier's Voyage into England (1665), Relation d’un voyage en Angleterre (1664), and a History of the Royal Society of London (1667), which Sprat had helped to found. The History of the Royal Society elaborates the scientific purposes of the academy and outlines some of the strictures of scientific writing that set the modern standards for clarity and conciseness. In 1669 he became canon of Westminster Abbey, and in 1670 rector of Uffington, Lincolnshire. He was appointed chaplain to King Charles II in 1676, curate at St. Margaret’s, Westminster in 1679, canon of Windsor in 1681, dean of Westminster in 1683 and Bishop of Rochester in 1684. He was a member of King James II’s ecclesiastical commission, and in 1688 he read the Declaration of Indulgence to empty benches in Westminster Abbey. Although he opposed the motion of 1689 declaring the throne vacant, he assisted at the coronation of William and Mary. As dean of Westminster he directed Christopher Wren’s restoration of the abbey.

In 1692 a bizarre attempt was made to implicate him in a plot to restore the deposed king James II. This became known as the "flowerpot plot" because it involved a conspirator - a man named Robert Young - forging Sprat's signature on a document, smuggling it into the Bishop’s manor and hiding the paper under a flowerpot. The authorities were contacted about the document, which led to the Bishop's arrest for high treason and the searching of his house - the forged document was eventually found where Young had said it would be. However, Sprat was soon freed when it became clear that there was no case to answer. Sprat died on May 20, 1713 and was interred at Westminster Abbey in St. Nicholas’ Chapel.

 

 

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends. The book can be ordered from Amazon through the following links: 

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Oscar Wilde is released from prison - 1897

On May 19, 1897, writer Oscar Wilde is released from jail after two years of hard labor. His experiences in prison were the basis for his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). Wilde was born and educated in Ireland. He studied at Oxford, graduated with honors in 1878, and remained in London. He became a popular society figure valued at dinner parties for his witty remarks. Embracing the late 19th century aesthetic movement, which embraced art for art's sake, Wilde adopted the flamboyant style of a passionate poet and self-published a volume of verse in 1881. He spent the following year in the United States lecturing on poetry and art. Wilde's dapper wardrobe and excessive devotion to art were parodied in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Patience in 1882.

After returning to Britain, Wilde married and had two children. In 1888, he published a collection of fairy tales he wrote for his children. Meanwhile, he wrote reviews and became editor of Women's World. In 1891, his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published. He wrote his first play, The Duchess of Padua, the same year and wrote five more before his arrest. His most successful comedies, including The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan, are still performed today. In 1891, the Marquess of Queensbury denounced Wilde as a homosexual. Wilde, who was involved with the Marquess' son, sued the Marquess for libel but lost the case when evidence supported the Marquess' allegations. Because homosexuality was still considered a crime in England, Wilde was arrested. Although his first trial resulted in a hung jury, a second jury sentenced him to two years of hard labor. After his release, Wilde fled to Paris and began writing again. He died of acute meningitis just three years after his release.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends. The book can be purchased from Amazon through the following links:

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Arrest warrant is issued for playwright Christopher Marlowe - 1593

On May 18, 1593, an arrest warrant was issued for playwright Christopher Marlowe, after fellow writer Thomas Kyd accused him of heresy. Fellow playwright Thomas Kyd, who wrote Spanish Tragedie (also called Hieronomo) was influential in the development of the revenge tragedy. Kyd had been arrested on May 15, 1593, and tortured on suspicion of treason. Told that heretical documents had been found in his room, Kyd wrote a letter saying that the documents belonged to Christopher Marlowe, with whom he had shared rooms previously. An arrest warrant was issued, and Marlowe was arrested on May 20th. Marlowe was bailed out of jail but was killed in a bar brawl May 30th. Though little is known about Kyd's childhood, scholars believe he was educated at the Merchant Taylor's School in London and raised to be a scrivener, a professional trained to draw up contracts and other business documents. Of his early work, the Spanish Tragedie (1592) brought him the most recognition. Some scholars believe it served as a model for Shakespeare's Hamlet. Kyd died penniless on August 15, 1594.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends. The book can be purchased from Amazon through the following links:

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English novelist Dorothy Richardson was born - 1873

On May 17, 1873, English writer Dorothy Richardson was born in Abingdon, England. Her stream-of-consciousness style will influence James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Richardson, though seldom read today, was widely read and discussed in her own time. The daughter of a grocer who went bankrupt when she was 17, Richardson was well-educated and highly independent. After her father's economic catastrophe, she took a job as a teacher in Germany for six months, then taught in London and worked as a governess for two years. In the late 1890s, Richardson devoted herself to caring for her severely depressed mother, who killed herself in November 1895 while Richardson was out taking a walk. After which, she moved to the Bloomsbury district in London, determined to support herself. She took a job as a dental assistant and earned extra money by writing essays and reviews. Unusually liberated for the time period, Richardson made friends with other young women who worked in offices. She attended public events and lived sparsely so she could afford concert tickets.

Richardson met writer H.G. Wells, the husband of an old school friend, in the early 1900s. She had an affair with Wells and in 1906 found herself pregnant with his child. She broke off with him, hoping to raise the child herself, but miscarried. She then moved to Sussex, where she wrote a monthly column for The Dental Record and sketches for The Saturday Review while working on the first volume of her stream-of-consciousness novel, Pilgrimage. The novel, which eventually stretched to 12 volumes, traced the development of a young woman whose life paralleled Richardson's. The first volume of the novel, called Pointed Roofs, was published in 1915, followed by two more volumes in 1916 and 1917. Richardson married an artist, 15 years her junior in 1917 and supported him with her writing. A review of her first three volumes published in 1918 first used the literary term "stream of consciousness" to describe her groundbreaking style. Many important 20th century writers adapted her techniques. Richardson died on June 17, 1957 at a nursing home in Beckenham, Kent, England at the age of 84.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends. The book can be purchased from Amazon through the following links:

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