Jane Austen died on July 18, 1817 in Winchester, England. She was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. She was born on December 16, 1775 in Hampshire, England the daughter of Cassandra Leigh and the reverend George Austen. The Austen’s were a very close-knit family; Jane had six brothers and one sister. Young Jane was tutored at home and attended the Abbey School in Reading, Berkshire. Jane was inseparable from her older sister Cassandra. They sang and danced and attended balls together. When George retired around 1801, he moved his family to Bath where he died in 1805. Adjusting to the ensuing financial difficulties, Jane, Cassandra and their mother then moved to Southampton for a time before settling in a cottage on the estate of Edward Austen in the village of Chawton, Hampshire in 1809. Austen had missed Steventon life and now returning to the Hampshire countryside she wrote in earnest, revising and writing new works including Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). Possibly suffering from Addison’s disease, Jane Austen died on July 18, 1817. She was buried in the north aisle of the nave in Winchester Cathedral in Winchester, England.

On July 13, 1798, while on a walking tour, William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visit a ruined church called Tintern Abbey. The ruins inspired Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey,” in which Wordsworth articulated some of the fundamental themes of Romantic poetry, including the restorative power of nature. The poem appeared in Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems in 1798, which Wordsworth collaborated on with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book, which also included Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, sold out within two years. The book’s second edition included an important preface that articulated the Romantic manifesto. Wordsworth was born near England’s Lake District in 1770. He lost his mother when he was eight, and his father died five years later. Wordsworth attended Cambridge, and then traveled in Europe, taking long walking tours with friends through the mountains. During his 20s, Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy and became close friends with Coleridge. In 1802, after years of living on a modest income, Wordsworth came into a long-delayed inheritance from his father and was able to live comfortably with his sister. The poet’s stature grew steadily, although most of his major work was written by 1807. In 1843, he was named poet laureate of England, and he died in 1850, at the age of 80.

On July 12, 1389, King Richard II appoints Geoffrey Chaucer to the position of chief clerk of the king’s works in Westminster on this day in 1389. Chaucer, the middle-class son of a wine merchant, served as a page in an aristocratic household during his teens and was associated with the aristocracy for the rest of his life. In 1359, he fought in France with Edward III, and was captured in a siege. Edward III ransomed him, and he later worked for Edward III and John of Gaunt. One of his earliest known works was an elegy for the deceased wife of John of Gaunt, Book of the Duchesse. In 1372, Chaucer traveled to Italy on diplomatic missions, where he may have been exposed to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. He also visited Flanders and France, and was appointed comptroller of customs. He wrote several poems in the 1380s, including The Parlement of Foules and Troilus and Criseyde. In the late 1380s or early 1390s, he began work on the Canterbury Tales, in which a mixed group of nobles, peasants, and clergy make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The work, a compilation of tales told by each character, is remarkable for its presentation of the spectrum of social classes. Although Chaucer intended the book to include 120 stories, he died in 1399, with only 22 tales finished.

English author Ann Radcliffe (nee Ann Ward) was born on July 9, 1764 in London and was a pioneer of the gothic novel. She married William Radcliffe, an editor for the English Chronicle, at Bath in 1788. To amuse herself, she began to write fiction, an avocation her husband encouraged. She published The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne in 1789. This set the tone for the majority of her work, which tended to involve innocent, but heroic young women who find themselves in gloomy, mysterious castles ruled by even more mysterious barons with dark pasts. Her works were extremely popular, especially with respectably sheltered young women. Her other famous works included The Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and The Italian (1796). The success of The Romance of the Forest established Radcliffe as the leading exponent of the historical Gothic romance. Her later novels met with even greater attention, and produced many imitators. She died on February 7, 1823, from what is believed to have been an asthma attack. At the time of her death there were rumors that she might also have gone insane.

Just announced (May 14, 2013) – Great Britain’s Royal Tombs is named a “finalist” in the Historical Non-Fiction and Coffee Table Book/ Photography categories of the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. www.indiebookawards.com

Fade to Black Graveside Memories of Hollywood Greats, 1927-1950 is named the winner of the 2013 Beverly Hills Book Awards in Arts & Entertainment.

http://www.beverlyhillsbookawards.com/2013-BHBA-Winnners-and-Finalists.htm

On February 4, 1826, James Fenimore Cooper’s classic The Last of the Mohicans is published. One of the earliest distinctive American novels, the book is the second of the five-novel series called the “Leather-stocking Tales.” Cooper was born in 1789 in New Jersey and moved the following year to the frontier in upstate New York, where his father founded frontier-town Coopersville. Cooper attended Yale but joined the Navy after he was expelled for a prank. When Cooper was about 20, his father died, and he became financially independent. Having drifted for a decade, Cooper began writing a novel after his wife challenged him to write something better than he was reading at the moment. His first novel, Precaution, modeled on Jane Austen, was not successful, but his second, The Spy, influenced by the popular writings of Sir Walter Scott, became a bestseller, making Cooper the first major American novelist. The story was set during the American Revolution and featured George Washington as a character. He continued to write about the American frontier in his third book, The Pioneer, which featured backcountry scout Natty Bumppo, known in this book as “Leather-stocking.” The character, representing goodness, purity, and simplicity, became tremendously popular, and reappeared, by popular demand, in five more novels, known collectively as the “Leather-stocking Tales.” The second book in the series, The Last of the Mohicans, is still widely read today. The five books span Bumppo’s life, from coming of age through approaching death. Cooper died in 1851.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends. His book can be pre-ordered from Amazon thought the following links:

Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Great-Britains-Literary-Legends-Writers/dp/0764344382/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

Amazon UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Britains-Literary-Legends-Writers/dp/0764344382/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1359998048&sr=8-13

On January 31, 1872 author Zane Grey, author of Riders of the Purple Sage, is born in Zanesville, Ohio. He was the son of a successful dentist, who enjoyed a happy and solid upper-middle-class childhood, marred only by occasional fistfights with boys who teased him about his unusual first name, Pearl. (Grey later replaced it with his mother’s maiden name, Zane.) A talented baseball player as teen, Grey caught the eye of a scout for the University of Pennsylvania college team, who convinced him to study there. In 1886, he graduated with a degree in dentistry and moved to New York to begin his practice.

Grey’s interest in dentistry was half-hearted at best, and he did not relish the idea of replicating his father’s safe but unexciting career path. Searching for an alternative, Grey decided to try his hand at writing; his first attempt was an uninspiring historical novel about a family ancestress. At that point, Grey might well have been doomed to a life of dentistry, had he not met Colonel C. J. “Buffalo” Jones in 1908, who convinced Grey to write Jones’ biography. More importantly, Jones took him out West to gather material for the book, and Grey became deeply fascinated with the people and landscape of the region.

Grey’s biography of Jones debuted in 1908 as The Last of the Plainsmen to little attention, but he was inspired to concentrate his efforts on writing historical romances of the West. In 1912, he published the novel that earned him lasting fame, Riders of the Purple Sage. Like the equally popular Owen Wister novel, The Virginian (1902), the basic theme of Riders revolves around the transformation of a weak and effeminate easterner into a man of character and strength through his exposure to the culture and land of the American West. Though Riders of the Purple Sage was Grey’s most popular novel, he wrote 78 other books during his prolific career, most of them Westerns. He died in 1939, but Grey’s work continued to be extraordinarily popular for decades to come and by 1955, his books had sold more than 31 million copies around the world. With the possible exception of Riders, today Grey’s books are little read, and most modern readers find them insufferably pompous, moralizing, and sentimental. Nonetheless, Grey played a pivotal role in creating the Western genre that, in the hands of more recent authors like Louis L’Amour, continues to charm many dedicated fans.

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

Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Great-Britains-Literary-Legends-Writers/dp/0764344382/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3

Amazon UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Britains-Literary-Legends-Writers/dp/0764344382/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1359653416&sr=8-4

Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” beginning “Once upon a midnight dreary,” is published on January 29, 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror. Poe’s dark and macabre work reflected his own tumultuous and difficult life. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was orphaned at age three and went to live with the family of a Richmond, Virginia, businessman. Poe enrolled in a military academy but was expelled for gambling. He later studied briefly at the University of Virginia. In 1827, he self-published a collection of poems. Six years later, his short story “MS Found in a Bottle” won $50 in a story contest. He edited a series of literary journals, including the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond starting in 1835, and Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia, starting in 1839. Poe’s excessive drinking got him fired from several positions. His macabre work, often portraying motiveless crimes and intolerable guilt that induces growing mania in his characters, was a significant influence on such European writers as Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, and even Dostoyevsky.

Michael Thomas Barry’s book Great Britain’s Literary Legends: The Lives & Burial Places of 50 Great Writers can be pre-ordered from the following links:

Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Great-Britains-Literary-Legends-Writers/dp/0764344382/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3

Barnes and Noble – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/great-britains-literary-legends-michael-thomas-barry/1113888569?ean=9780764344381

Schiffer Books – http://www.schifferbooks.com/newschiffer/book_template.php?isbn=9780764344381

January 12, 2013 – Listen to my interview with Kari Moran as we discuss my newest book – Great Briatin’s Royal Tombs: A Guide to the Lives & Burial Places of British Monarchs. Show #77 Chapter One – Non-Fiction.

Click the link – www.thebookradioshow.com