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November Literary Birthdays

KAREL HYNEK MACHA
Czech poet, Nov. 16, 1810 - Nov. 5, 1836

Macha was born in Prague at Mala Strana. Tragical death of his girlfriend Marinka Stichova deeply influenced his works. During his studies of law on prague's university he also became involved in theatre, where he met Eleonora Sonkova, with whom he had a son out of wedlock. Two days befored he was supposed to be married to Somkova, just a few weeks after he had begun working as a legal assistant, Mácha died after a short period of illness. The exact cause of his death is unknown, but both spotted fever and bloody flux had been suspected.

His lyrical epic poem Máj (May), published in 1836 shortly before his death, was judged by his contemporaries as immoral and as a threat to society. The work was rejected by publishers, and was published by a vanity press at Macha's own expense, not long before his early death. Macha's reputation improved after his death and Máj is now regarded as the classic work of Czech Romanticism.

His work available in english translation:
Máj (May) (1836)

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Other Literary Birthdays

New Jersey-born novelist, reporter, and poet Stephen Crane, (1871)
Austrian novelist Hermann Broch (1886)
Palestinian/American (born Jerusalem) Edward Said (1935)
French novelist Andre Malraux (1901)
French existentialist essayist, novelist, journalist (born Algeria), awarded 1957 Nobel in Literature Albert Camus (1913)
Irish creator of Dracula Bram Stoker (1847)
Japanese/English Booker Prize winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (1954)
Russian novelist, poet and playwright Ivan Turgenev (1818)
Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821)
American writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922)
Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes (1928)
Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850)
Swedish children's writer and Pippi Longstocking creator Astrid Lindgren (1907)
Ohio-born humorist and libertarian P.J. O'Rourke (1947)
British writer of darkly comic novels Tibor Fischer (1959)
Portuguese playwright, novelist, short story writer, Nobel Prize winner in 1998 José Saramago (1922)
Nigerian fiction writer, essayist, and poet Chinua Achebe (1930)
Canadian novelist, poet, and short-story writer Margaret Atwood (1939)
South African novelist, short-story writer, and Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer (1923)
French philosopher and writer Voltaire (1694)
French novelist and poet, awarded the 1947 Nobel prize for literature André Gide (1869)
English novelist George Eliot (1819)
Dutch philosopher, author, and lens-grinder Benedictus de Spinoza (1632)
Irish novelist Laurence Sterne (1713)
Romanian/French playwright Eugene Ionesco (1909)
Tennessee-born novelist and poet James Agee (1909)
Visionary and revolutionary English poet and painter William Blake (1757)
German (born Vienna, Austria) poet, translator, biographer, short-story writer, and novelist Stefan Zweig (1881)
Pennsylvania-born novelist and mystery writer Rita Mae Brown (1944)
Pennsylvania-born author C.S. Lewis (1898)
English poet; English satirist Jonathan Swift (1667)
American humorist Mark Twain (1835)
Chicago-born playwright, screenwriter and director David Mamet (1947)