On the 26th of September 1905, Jeanne Clémence Weil, mother of writer Marcel Proust, died in Ile de France, Paris. Madame Proust, as she was to be known, seeing as Marcel never got married, was born Jewish on both sides of her family. Her genealogy actually shows that Marcel Proust and Karl Marx were distant cousins, albeit seven […]
Category Archives: Books
August
30
The Tragedies of Mary Shelley
posted by ArtLark
On the 30th of August 1797, English novelist Mary (Wollstonecraft) Shelley was born in London. She was the wife and muse of Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley, daughter of political philosopher William Godwin and of philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, she was most famous […]
August
26
Peggy Guggenheim: The Woman Behind the Art
posted by ArtLark
On the 26th of August 1898, American matron and collector of the arts Peggy Guggenheim was born in New York. “Peggy Guggenheim was one of ten children-the second of three daughters-born to Benjamin Guggenheim and Florette Seligman, both second-generation members of German-Jewish families that had built their wealth in America. Two of her uncles, Solomon […]
July
31
Primo Levi: Chemistry and the Holocaust
posted by ArtLark
On the 31st of July 1919, the Italian Jewish chemist and writer Primo Levi was born in Turin, Italy. A survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he emerged after the war as one of the most incisive and candid intellects among those writers who had experienced the Holocaust. He grew up during the years preceding […]
July
28
Beatrix Potter: Nature as First and Last Resort
posted by ArtLark
On the 28th of July 1866, Helen Beatrix Potter, English author of the Peter Rabbit children’s books, was born in Kensington, London. Less known is her career as a naturalist and realist artist. Botany and nature study were passions of most Victorians and Potter tried her hand at various naturalist pursuits from an early age: […]
July
16
Censorship in Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’
posted by ArtLark
On the 16th of July 1951, The Catcher in the Rye, a novel by J. D. Salinger was published by Little, Brown and Company in the United States. Initially intended for an adult audience, the book soon found its own readership and has since become enormously popular with adolescents, mainly as it explores themes such as teenage […]
July
04
Alice in Wonderland and Photography
posted by ArtLark
On the 4th of July 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in London. Written by Victorian author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, author, mathematician and Oxford don, this fantasy novel has since made him famous all over the world. Less known is the fact that Dodgson was also an avid […]
June
27
Beyond Sound and Vision: Helen Keller and the Story of Her Life
posted by ArtLark
On the 27th of June 1880, the remarkable American author, political activist, and lecturer Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. In her autobiography The Story of My Life, which she wrote aged twenty-two, Keller recalls her early years: “The beginning of my life was simple and much like every other little life. I came, […]
June
25
George Orwell’s Childhood Recollections
posted by ArtLark
On the 25th of June 1903, English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic Eric Arthur Blair, known by the pen name George Orwell, was born in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India. Regarded as one of the most influential English writers of the twentieth century, he is best known for the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which he […]
June
11
Renée Vivien and the Trials of Lesbian Poetry
posted by ArtLark
On the 11th of June 1877, English poet Renée Vivien (née Pauline Mary Tarn) was born in London to a wealthy British father and an American mother. She adopted her French name at the age of twenty-one after moving to Paris, where she lived a notorious bohemian lifestyle defined by her quirky style of dressing, turbulent […]
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