The Literary Ladies Almanac
Important dates in women’s classic literature, including birthdates, death anniversaries, publication dates, and other literary milestones.
January
- 1, 1818: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is published anonymously in London
- 1, 1839: Ouida (Louise de la Ramée) is born (Bury St. Edmunds, England)
- 5, 1950: The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, based on
the author’s novel, opens at the Empire Theater on Broadway (NYC) to critical acclaim - 7, 1891: Zora Neale Hurston is born (Notasulga, Alabama)
- 9, 1908: Simone de Beauvoir is born (Paris, France)
- 10, 1909: Mae V. Cowdery is born (Philadelphia, PA)
- 11, 1801: Caroline Kirkland is born (New York City)
- 14, 1912: Tillie Olsen is born (Omaha, Nebraska)
- 14, 1963: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas.
- 17, 1820: Anne Brontë is born (Thornton, Yorkshire, England)
- 19, 1925: Nina Bawden is born (Goodmayes, Essex, England)
- 20, 1993: Maya Angelou becomes the first female African American poet
to recite at an American president’s inauguration - 22, 2018: Ursula K. Le Guin dies (Portland, OR)
- 24, 1862: Edith Wharton is born (NYC, NY)
- 25, 1905: Margery Sharp is born (Salisbury, England)
- 25, 1882: Virginia Woolf is born (Hyde Park Gate, London)
- 26, 1831: Mary Mapes Dodge is born (New York City)
- 28, 1873: Colette is born (Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, France)
- 28, 1813: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is published in Britain
February
- 1, 1918: Muriel Spark is born (Edinburgh, Scotland)
- 2, 1905: Ayn Rand is born (St. Petersburg, Russia)
- 3, 1874: Gertrude Stein is born (Allegheny, PA)
- 7, 1867: Laura Ingalls Wilder is born (Cuba, NY)
- 8, 1850: Kate Chopin is born (St. Louis, Missouri)
- 8, 1911: Elizabeth Bishop is born (Worcester, MA)
- 9, 1874: Amy Lowell is born (Brookline, MA)
- 11, 1802: Lydia Maria Child is born (Medford, MA)
- 11, 1963: Sylvia Plath commits suicide (London, England)
- 11, 1893: Nan Shepherd is born (East Peterculter, Scotland)
- 12, 1938: Judy Blume is born (Elizabeth, NJ)
- 17, 1879: Dorothy Canfield Fisher is born (Lawrence, Kansas)
- 17, 1914: Julia de Burgos is born (Carolina, Puerto Rico)
- 18, 1934: Audre Lorde is born (New York City)
- 19, 1917: Carson McCullers is born (Columbus, Ga.)
- 21, 1903: Anais Nin is born (Neuilly, France)
- 27, 1880: Angelina Weld Grimké is born (Boston, MA)
March
- 5, 1940: Daphne Du Maurier’s stage version of Rebecca is released
- 5, 1839: Charlotte Brontë declines a marriage proposal, writing:
“I am not the serious, grave, cool-hearted individual you suppose;
you would think me romantic and eccentric.” - 6, 1806: Elizabeth Barrett Browning is born (County Durham, England)
- 6, 1888: Louisa May Alcott dies of a stroke, age 55 (Boston, MA)
- 9, 1892: Vita Sackville-West is born (Knole, Kent, England)
- 11, 1818: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is published
- 12, 1936: Virginia Hamilton is born (Yellow Springs, Ohio)
- 15, 2011: Maya Angelou is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
by President Barack Obama. - 20, 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published
- 23, 1917: Leonard and Virginia Woolf buy a small hand-press and start
Hogarth Press in their dining room. - 25, 1925: Flannery O’Connor is born (Savannah, Ga.)
- 25, 1881: Mary Webb is born (England)
- 26, 1908: Betty MacDonald is born (Boulder, CO)
- 28, 1941: Virginia Woolf, 59, ends her life by walking into the River Ouse
- 31, 1855: Charlotte Brontë dies of complications due to pregnancy, age 38.
April
- 4, 1928: Maya Angelou is born (St. Louis, MO)
- 7, 1889: Gabriela Mistral is born (Vicuña, Chile)
- 7, 1906: Miles Franklin embarks on theVentura for America
- 9, 1929: Paule Marshall is born (Brooklyn, NY)
- 13, 1902: Marguerite Henry is born (Milwaukee, WI)
- 13, 1909: Eudora Welty is born (Jackson, MS)
- 13, 1891: Nella Larsen is born (Chicago, Illinois)
- 15, 1916: Helene Hanff is born (Philadelphia, PA)
- 16, 1912: Edith Wharton signs a contract for The Reef, accepting a $15,000 advance
- 16, 1962: The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing is published
- 17, 1883: Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) is born (Rungsted, Denmark)
- 18, 1983: Alice Walker wins the Pulizer Prize for her novel The Color Purple
- 21, 1816: Charlotte Brontë is born (Thornton, Yorkshire, England)
- 22, 1873: Ellen Glasgow is born (Richmond, VA)
- 25, 1892: Maud Hart Lovelace is born (Mankato, Minnesota)
- 26, 1889: Anita Loos is born (Mt. Shasta, CA)
- 27, 1759: Mary Wollstonecraft is born (London, England)
- 27, 1882: Jessie Redmon Fauset is born (Camden County, New Jersey)
- 28, 1934: Lois Duncan is born (Philadelphia, PA)
May
- 1, 1925: Zora Neale Hurston wins second place for both Color Struck and Spunk
at the literary awards dinner sponsored by Opportunity magazine. - 1, 1950: Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African American woman
to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, at age 33 - 2, 1945: Colette, age 72, becomes the first female member of the Académie Goncourt.
- 3, 1960: The Anne Frank House opens to the public in Amsterdam.
- 5, 1927: Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is published
- 7, 1846: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë publish their collection of poetry
under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. - 7, 1940: Angela Carter is born (Eastbourne, England)
- 9, 1906: Eleanor Estes is born (West Haven, Connecticut)
- 12, 1925: Amy Lowell dies of a cerebral hemorrhage; soon after, she is
posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. - 13, 1907: Daphne Du Maurier is born (London, England)
- 14, 1925: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is published in England and the U.S.
- 15, 1890: Katherine Anne Porter is born (Indian Creek, Texas)
- 16, 1929: Adrienne Rich is born (Baltimore, MD)
- 19, 1952: Lillian Hellman refuses to testify against her associates before the House Committee
on Un-American Activities: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” - 19, 1930: Lorraine Hansberry is born (Chicago, IL)
- 20, 1882: Sigrid Undset is born (Kalundborg, Denmark)
- 21, 1910: Colette‘s novel, The Vagabond, begins to get published in serial form
- 23, 1910: Margaret Wise Brown is born (NYC)
- 27, 1907: Rachel Carson is born (Springdale, PA)
- 28, 1849: Anne Brontë dies of tuberculosis, 29 (Scarborough, Yorkshire, England)
- 28, 2014: Maya Angelou dies of natural causes, 88 (Winston-Salem, NC)
June
- 2, 1913: Barbara Pym is born, Oswestry, UK)
- 2, 1907: Dorothy West is born (Boston, MA)
- 4, 1940: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by 23-year-old Carson McCullers is published.
- 5, 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin begins publication in serial form
in the abolitionist newspaper, The National Era. - 7, 1917: Gwendolyn Brooks is born (Topeka, Kansas)
- 7, 1943: Nikki Giovanni is born (Knoxville, TN)
- 11, 1894: Eulalie Spence is born (Nevis, British West Indies)
- 12, 1802: Harriet Martineau is born (Norwich, England)
- 12, 1929: Anne Frank is born (Frnakfurt, Germany)
- 12, 1929: Brigid Brophy is born (London, England)
- 14, 1811: Harriet Beecher Stowe is born (Litchfield, Conn)
- 16, 1956: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes are married after a brief courtship
- 20, 1923: Edith Wharton becomes first woman to receive an honorary
Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University. - 20, 1905: Lillian Hellman is born (New Orleans)
- 21, 1912: Mary McCarthy is born (Seattle, Wash)
- 22, 1947: Octavia E. Butler is born (Pasadana, CA)
- 23, 1889: Anna Akhmatova was born in the Odessa Empire (now part of Ukraine).
- 26, 1948: Shirley Jackson’s controversial short story, “The Lottery” is published in The New Yorker.
- 26, 1892: Pearl S. Buck is born (Hillsboro, W.Va)
- 26, 1936: Lucille Clifton is born (DePew, NY)
- 27, 1880: Helen Keller is born (Tuscumbia, AL)
- 28, 1913: Willa Cather‘s O Pioneers! is published
- 30, 1936: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind is published.
and becomes the fastest-selling novel in U.S. history.
July
- 1, 1804: George Sand is born (Paris)
- 1, 1876: Susan Glaspell is born (Davenport, IA)
- 3, 1860: Charlotte Perkins Gilman is born (Hartford, CT)
- 3, 1912: Elizabeth Taylor (Reading, UK)
- 9, 1764: Ann Radcliffe is born (London, UK)
- 11, 1960: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is published
- 15, 1919: Iris Murdoch is born (Dublin, Ireland)
- 16, 1882: Ida B. Wells is born (Holly Springs, MS)
- 16, 1929: Anita Brookner is born (Herne Hill, England)
- 17, 1902: Christina Stead is born (Australia)
- 18, 1817: Jane Austen dies of an unknown illness, 41 (Winchester, England)
- 19, 1865: Alice Dunbar-Nelson is born (New Orleans, LA)
- 22, 1849: Emma Lazarus is born (NYC)
- 22, 1881: Margery Williams is born (London, England)
- 24, 1876: Jean Webster is born (Fredonia, NY)
- 28, 1866: Beatrix Potter is born (Kensington, London, England)
- 22, 1948: S. E. Hinton is born (Tulsa, OK)
- 30, 1818: Emily Brontë is born (Thornton, West Yorkshire, England)
August
- 2, 1869: George Eliot begins Middlemarch
- 6, 1975: Agatha Christie’s character Hercule Poirot receives an obituary in
the New York Times after being killed off in Curtain: Hercule Poirot’s Last Case - 8, 1896: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is born (Washington, DC)
- 9, 1899: P.L Travers is born (Maybourough, Australia)
- 9, 1914: Tove Jansson is born (Helsinki, Finland)
- 11, 1897: Louise Bogan is born (Livermore Falls, ME)
- 11, 1897: Enid Blyton is born (London, England)
- 12, 1880: Radclyffe Hall is born (Bournemouth, Hampshire)
- 15, 1885: Edna Ferber is born (Kalamazoo, MI)
- 16, 1949: Margaret Mitchell dies of injuries after being struck by a car, 49
(Atlanta, GA) - 17, 1863: Gene Stratton-Porter is born (Largo, IN)
- 22, 1893: Dorothy Parker is born (Long Branch, NJ)
- 30, 1797: Mary Shelley is born (Somers Town, London)
September
- 2, 2020: Octavia E. Butler posthumously fulfills her goal of becoming a
New York Times bestselling author when Parable of the Sower hits the list - 3, 1849: Sarah Orne Jewett is born (South Berwick, Maine)
- 3, 1947: Publication date of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
- 5, 1859: Harriet E. Wilson anonymously self-publishes her
autobiographical novel, Our Nig. - 7, 1887: Dame Edith Sitwell is born (Scarborough, England)
- 7, 1903: Margaret Landon is born (Somers, WI)
- 8, 1924: Grace Metalius is born (Manchester, NH)
- 9, 1868: Mary Hunter Austin is born (Carlinville, IL)
- 9, 1934: Sonia Sanchez is born (Birmingham, AL)
- 9, 1910: Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein take up residence together in Paris.
- 10, 1797: Mary Wollstonecraft dies 11 days after giving birth to Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft
(later Mary Shelley, best known for Frankenstein). - 10, 1925: Mary Oliver is born (Maple Heights, OH)
- 12, 1846: Elizabeth Barrett & Robert Browning are secretly married
- 15, 1890: Agatha Christie is born (Torquay, Devon, England)
- 16, 1940: Leonard and Virginia Woolf‘‘s London apartement is destroyed by the Blitz;
they were at their country home at the time. - 16, 1987: Toni Morrison‘s masterpiece, Beloved, is published.
- 19, 1894: Rachel Field is born (New York City)
- 23, 1856: Baroness Emma “Emmuska” Orczy is born (Tarnaörs, Hungary)
- 26, 1942: Gloria E. Anzaldúa is born (Rio Grand Valley, TX)
- 27, 1962: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is published.
- 28, 1856: Kate Douglas Wiggin is born (Philadelphia, Penn)
- 28, 1871: Grazia Deledda is born (Nuoro, Sardinia)
- 29, 1810: Elizabeth Gaskell is born (London, England)
- 30, 1868: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is published
October
- 1, 1868 – The first half of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is published
(eventually it is combined with its sequel, Good Wives, into the novel now known
as Little Women) - 2, 1902: Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter is published by Frederick Warne
- 2, 1926: Jan Morris is born (Clevedon, UK)
- 5, 1928: Louise Fitzhugh is born (Memphis, TN)
- 8, 1931: Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is published
- 12, 1908: Ann Petry is born (Old Saybrook, CT)
- 12, 1916: Alice Childress is born in Charleston, SC)
- 14, 1879: Miles Franklin (Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin) is born
(Talbingo, Australia) - 14, 1888: Katherine Mansfield is born (Wellington, New Zealand)
- 14, 1893: Lois Lenski is born (Springfield, OH)
- 16, 1847: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is published in London to instant success
- 18, 1775: Phillis Wheatley is freed from enslavement.
- 18, 1948: Ntozake Shange is born (Trenton, NJ)
- 19, 1885: Fannie Hurst is born (Hamilton, OH)
- 19, 1950: Edna St. Vincent Millay dies of a heart attack and fall (Austerlitz, NY)
- 20, 1928: Dorothy Parker disses Winnie-the-Pooh in her New Yorker book review column
- 22, 1919: Doris Lessing is born (Persia – present day Iran)
- 27, 1932: Sylvia Plath is born (Boston, Mass)
- 27, 1962: Sylvia Plath composes her iconic poem, “Ariel,” on her 30th birthday
- 27, 1889: Enid Bagnold is born (Rochester, UK)
- 29, 1929: Ursula K. Le Guin is born (Berkeley, CA)
- 31, 1876: Natalie Clifford Barney is born (Cincinnati, OH)
November
- 4, 1965: Photojournalist Dickey Chapelle is killed by shrapnel in Vietnam,
becoming the first American female war correspondent to die on a battlefield. - 8, 1900: Margaret Mitchell is born (Atlanta, GA)
- 9, 1958: Dorothy Canfield Fisher dies, 79 (Arlington, VT)
- 10, 1931: J. California Cooper is born (Berkeley, CA)
- 10, 1938: Pearl S. Buck is awarded the Nobel prize
- 10, 1861: Amy Levy is born (London, England)
- 12, 1890: The first volume of Emily Dickinson’s poems appear in print,
some four years after her death - 14, 1907: Astrid Lindgren is born (Vimmerby, Sweden)
- 16, 1940: Elspeth Barker is born (Edinburgh, Scotland)
- 17, 1887: Emma Lazarus dies of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, 38 (New York City)
- 19, 1919: Sylvia Beach establishes Shakespeare & Company in Paris.
- 20, 1858: Selma Lagerlöf is born (Värmland, Sweden)
- 20, 1923: Nadine Gordimer is born (Springs, South Africa)
- 22, 1819: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is born
(Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England) - 24, 1849: Frances Hodgson Burnett is born (Cheetham, England)
- 29, 1918: Madeleine L’Engle is born (NYC, NY)
- 29, 1832: Louisa May Alcott is born (Germantown, PA)
- 30, 1874: L.M Montgomery is born (Prince Edward Island, Canada)
December
- 3, 1926: Agatha Christie disappears from her Surrey, England home
- 5, 1876: Flora Thompson is born (Juniper Hill, Oxfordshire, UK)
- 7, 1873: Willa Cather is born (Back Creek Valley, Virginia)
- 10, 1903: Mary Norton is born (London, UK)
- 10, 1907: Rumer Godden is born (Eastbourne, UK)
- 10, 1830: Emily Dickinson is born (Amherst, MA)
- 14, 1847: Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights
& Anne Brontë‘s Agnes Grey are published as a 3-volume set - 14, 1916: Shirley Jackson is born (San Francisco, CA)
- 15, 1948: Daphne Du Maurier’s play “September Tide” released
- 15, 1896: Betty Smith is born (Brooklyn, NYC)
- 16, 1775: Jane Austen is born (Stevenson, Hampshire)
- 16, 1898: The Brontë Society is established, eventually becoming
the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, England - 16, 1901: Tired of constant rejection, Beatrix Potter self-publishes Peter Rabbit
- 17, 1916: Penelope Fitzgerald is born (Lincoln, England)
- 19, 1848: Emily Brontë dies of Tuberculosis, 30 (Haworth, UK)
- 21, 1892: Rebecca West is born (Cicely Isabel Fairfield, County Kerry, Ireland)
- 23, 1815: Jane Austen’s novel Emma is published in London
- 29, 1893: Vera Brittain is born (Newcastle-under-Lyme, UK)