April 27, 1667 – Blind and impoverished poet John Milton sells the copyright to his masterpiece Paradise Lost for a mere 10 pounds. Once printed, the poem was immediately hailed as a masterpiece of the English language.
literature
The Robinson Crusoe Adventure Begins
April 25, 1719 – Daniel Defoe’s fictional work The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small island off the coast of South America in the early 1700s.
Honored
I am so honored to have one of my favorite writers, Robert Brault, profile me on his blog. His words have been an inspiration to me for many years. “Every seven minutes, every day, someone in the Twitter world tweets a Robert Brault quote.” Check out his blog. Thanks, Robert!
The Rick Lewis Touch
Check out Robert’s book when you visit his blog!
On This Day
March 4, 1952 – Ernest Hemingway completes his short novel “The Old Man and the Sea.” He wrote his publisher the same day, saying he had finished the book and that it was the best writing he had ever done. The critics agreed: The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and became one of his bestselling works.
Artwork by AdventDraconis
On This Day
February 4, 1826 – “The Last of the Mohicans” by James Fenimore Cooper is published.
On This Day
December 6, 1933 – A federal judge rules that Ulysses by James Joyce is not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in both the UnitedStates and England when it came out in 1922. With its radical stream-of-consciousness narrative, Ulysses deeply influenced the development of the modern novel.
On This Day
November 18, 1865 – Samuel L. Clemens published “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” under the pen name “Mark Twain” in the New York “Saturday Press.”
Elysian Waters 