Authors' Birthdays/February

1st

• Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), Austrian poet, dramatist, and essayist, whose plays, including Elektra (1903) and Der Rosenkavalier (1911), are best known as texts for Richard Strauss operas
• Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937), Russian author, known for his future-dystopian novel We
• Charles Nordhoff (1887-1947), American novelist and traveler, best known for The Mutiny on the Bounty
• Denise Robbins (1897), London romantic novelist; African-American poet and translator, born Missouri
• (James Mercer) Langston Hughes, leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance (1902-1967)
• S. J. Perleman (1904), humour essayist and screenplay writer
• Muriel Spark (1918), Scottish novelist
• Galway Kinnell (1927), Rhode Island-born poet and 1983 Pulitzer prize winner (poem "The Correspondence School Instructor...")
• Reynolds Price (1933), North Carolina-born novelist, wrote Kate Vaiden
• Jerry Spinelli (1941), Newbery-award-winning children's author

2nd

• Hannah Moore (1745), popular English novelist
• Hamid Abdulhak (1852–1937), Turkish romantic poet and playwright
• (Henry) Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)
• Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. (1861– 1949), Kentucky-born poet, dramatist, and short story writer, best known for Caleb, the Degenerate (1901), one of the earliest dramas by an African-American writer
• Christian Gauss (1878), educator, writer, Princeton dean
• James (Augustine) Joyce (1882–1941), Irish novelist, poet, and stream-of-consciousness pioneer, author of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914), Ulysses (1922) (which was banned in the U.S until a court decision in its favour in 1933), and Finnegan's Wake (1939)
• Rebecca Caudill (1899–1985)
• Ayn Rand (1905), Russian-born novelist
• Bernardas Brazdzionis (1907), Lithuanian poet, editor, and critic (5 Brazdzionis poems)
• James Dickey (1923–1997), poet and Deliverance novelist
• Judith Viorst (1931), New Jersey native, poet and children's author
• Betsy Duffey (1953)
• Eve Rice (1951)
• Mary Casanova (1957)

3rd

• Horace Greeley (1811 – 29 Nov 1872): New Hampshire-born editor, founder of the New York Tribune; Project Gutenberg; NNDB
• Walter Bagehot (1826 – 1877): English economist and journalist, whose father-inlaw was the founder of the Economist, which Bagehot edited from 1860 until his death
• Sidney Lanier (1842 – 1881): Georgia-born musician, poet, and critic
• Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946): Pittsburgh native, longtime Paris resident, avant-garde writer
• Clarence Edward Mulford (1883 - 10 May 1956): Illinois western writer, wrote Hopalong Cassidy novels; Project Gutenberg;NNDB
• James A. Michener (1907 - 16 Oct 1997): NNDB
• Walt Morey (1907 – 1992)
• Simone Weil (1909), French essayist, philosopher, and fighter for the Resistance
• Lao She
• Joan Lowery Nixon (1927 - 2003)
• John Wallner (1945)

4th

• Pierre De Marivaux (1688), French writer
• George Lillo (1693), English dramatist
• Jacques Prevert (1900), French poet and screenwriter "Les enfants qui s'aiment"
• MacKinlay Kantor (1904), Iowa-born writer of Andersonville, 1956 Pulitzer prize winner;
• (Mattheus) Uys Krige (1910–1987), South African playwright and novelist [site in French];
• Betty Friedan (1921), Illinois-born feminist writer
• Russell Hoban (1926)
• Barbara Shook Hazen (1930)
• Pat Ross (1943)
• Robert Coover (1948), novelist and Brown University professor
• Carl Michael Bellman
• Georg Brandes
• William Harrison Ainsworth (1805 – 3 Jan. 1882)

5th

• Mona Kerby (1951)
• Patricia Lauber (1924)
• Joan Elma Rahn (1929)
• David Wiesner (1956)
• Marie Sevigne (1626), French letter-writer
• Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804), Finnish poet
• Joris Karl Huysmans (1848–1907), French novelist, born Charles Marie Georges Huysmans, who wrote A Rebours (1884); transl. as Against the Grain)
• William S. Burroughs (1914), St. Louis-born experimental novelist
• Andrew Greeley (1928), novelist, writer on religion and sociology, and Catholic priest, born illinois
• Elizabeth Swados (1951), U.S. composer and playwright, winner of 1972 Tony
• Jorn Donner
• Margaret Millar

6th

• Berta Hader (1891–1976)
• Weyman B. Jones (1928)
• Jerome Wexler (1923)
• Christopher Marlowe (1564), English poet and dramatist
• Ugo Foscolo (1778), Italian poet, playwright, journalist, author
• Kroly Kisfaludy (1788), Hungarian romantic poet
• Melvin B(eaunorus) Tolson (1898–1966), Missouri native, African American poet, journalist, and dramatist, one-time Poet Laureate of Liberia
• Louis Nizer (1902), British-born American lawyer, author, and defender of those blacklisted, summary of his book The Implosion Consipracy
• Pramoedya Ananta Toer

7th

• Shonto Begay (1954)
• Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
• Fred Gipson (1908–1973)
• Sinclair Lewis, novelist and social critic, winner of 1930 Nobel (7 Feb. 1885 – 10 Jan. 1951)
• Ann Radcliffe, London-born Gothic novelist (1764)
• Frederik Paludan-Muller (1809), Danish romantic poet
• Sir James [Augustus Henry] Murray (1837–1915), Scottish lexicographer, creator of the Oxford English Dictionary
• Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957), Wisconsin-born children's writer, creator of the "Little House on the Prairie" series
• Milton Krims (1904), teleplay writer (Outer Limits, Perry Mason) and director
• Gay Talese (1932), author
• Jacob Paludan

8th

• Adrienne Adams (1906–2002)
• Anne Rockwell (1934)
• Robert Burton, aka Democritus Junior, English scholar, Anglican clergyman, and writer (1577–1640), who wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
• Samuel Butler (1612–1680), English poet and satirist, who wrote the highly autobiographical and satiric novel The Way of All Flesh (1903)
• John Ruskin (1819–1900), writer and art critic
• Jules Verne (1828–1905), French science fiction pioneer, Around the World in 80 Days, etc.
• Elizabeth Bishop (1911), Massachusetts-born poet, who won a Pulitzer in 1956
• Kate Chopin (1851–1904), St. Louis, Missouri-born writer of The Awakening
• John Grisham (1955), Mississippi-based novelist
• Henry Roth
• Eila Pennanen

9th

• Dick Gackenbach (1927)
• Stephen Roos (1945)
• Hilda Van Stockum (1908)
• Frans Michael Franzen (1772), Finnish-Swedish poet, journalist, educator, and bishop
• George Ade (1866–1944), U.S. journalist, playwright, and humorist
• Amy Lowell, Massachusetts-born imagist poet and critic (1847);
• Brendan Behan (1923), Irish author
• Alice Walker (1944), Georgia-born novelist and essayist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple (1982)
• Natsume Soseki
• J.M. Coetzee

10th

• Franz Brandenberg (1932)
• Lucy Cousins (1964)
• Edward Dolan (1924)
• Stephen Gammell (1943)
• E. L. Konigsburg (1930)
• Mark Teague (1963)
• Sir John Suckling, English poet and dramatist (1609; 12 of Suckling's poems);
• William Congreve (1670), Restoration writer dramatist and poet, teaching notes on The Way of the World
• Charles Lamb aka Elia (1775–1834), English poet, essayist, critic, and man of letters, who wrote The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) and the popular children's book Tales from Shakespeare (1807)
• William Allen White (1868), Kansas editor and 1942 Pulitzer Prize winner
• Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), Russian novelist and poet
• Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1898–1956), German playwright and poet, born Eugen, whose major plays include "Mother Courage and Her Children" (1941) and "Galileo" (1938);
• Roxanne Pulitzer (1951)
• Henry Roth
• Tito Colliander

11th

• Toshi Maruko (1912)
• James Rice (1934)
• Jane Yolen (1939)
• Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880), U.S. author and abolitionist (story "Stand From Under")
• Roy Fuller (1912), English poet and novelist
• Sidney Sheldon (1917), Chicago-born novelist, winner of 1947 Academy Award and a 1959 Tony Award
• Elsa Beskow
• Maryse Conde

12th

• Ann Atwood (1913)
• Judy Blume (1938)
• Chris Conover (1950)
• David Small (1945)
• Jacqueline Woodson (1963)
• Thomas Campion (1567–1620), English composer, poet, and physician (6 Campion poems)
• Cotton Mather (1663), American preacher and writer
• Charles [Robert] Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)
• George Meredith, English poet and novelist (1828; Meredith poems);
• Judy Blume (1938), children's author
• Andrew Garve

13th

• Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965)
• Janet Taylor Lisle (1947)
• William Mayne (1928)
• Ouida Sebestyen (1924)
• William Sleator (1945)
• Simms Taback (1932)
• Prosper Jolyot, Sieur de Crebillon (1674–1762), French dramatist, whose licentious plays portrayed the depravity of high Parisian culture
• Kanzo Uchimura (1861–1930), Japanese religious writer;
• Ricardo Guiraldes (1886–1927), Argentinian novelist and poet;
• Georges Simenon (1903–1989), Belgian mystery writer, creator of Inspector Maigret
• Ivan Krylov (1769-1844)

14th

• Jamake Highwater (1942–2001)
• Phyllis Root (1949)
• George Shannon (1952)
• Paul O. Zelinsky (1953)
• Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888), Argentinian writer
• Frank Harris (1856), English journalist and writer
• Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), English Jewish author
• George Jean Nathan (1882–1958), Indiana-born editor, drama critic, and author, who co-founded the American Mercury magazine in 1924 with H.L. Mencken;
• A. M[oses] Klein (1909), Russian-born Canadian poet
• Carl Bernstein (1944), Washington, D.C.-born journalist and author, who with Bob Woodward won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his Watergate coverage and wrote the best-selling All the President's Men (1974)

15th

• Betty Boegehol
• Norman Bridwell (1928)
• Richard Chase (1904–1988)
• Jan Spivey Gilchrist (1949)
• Elaine Landau (1948)
• Doris Orgel (1929)
• Sax Rohmer, born Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward (1886–1959), English mystery author, creator of Dr. Fu Manchu
• Herman Kahn (1922–1983), New Jersey-born writer on thermonuclear war
• Susan Brownmiller, Brooklyn feminist author (1935; review of Seeing Vietnam);
• Douglas R. Hofstadter (1945), author of Goedel, Escher, Bach

16th

• Nancy Ekholm Burkert (1933)
• Elizabeth K. Cooper (1916)
• Carol Gorman (1952)
• [Johann Jakob] Wilhelm Heinse (1746–1803), German novelist and art critic
• Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918), grandson of John Quincy Adams, Boston-born historian and writer, who wrote The Education of Henry Adams
• Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917, also on 16 Feb), French writer
• Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963), New Jersey native, critic, biographer, and literary historian, author of the five-volume literary history Makers and Finders, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1937;
• Hal Porter (1911), Australian short story writer
• G[eorge] M[acaulay] Trevelyan (1876–1962), English historian and writer
• Richard Ford (1944), Mississippi-born novelist and sportswriter, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Independence Day (1995)

17th

• Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879–1958)
• Michael McCurdy (1942)
• André Norton (1912)
• Robert Newton Peck (1928)
• Susan Beth Pfeffer (1948)
• Virginia Sorensen (1912–1991)
• Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836–1870), Spanish romantic poet and journalist, Becquer's "Rhyme LXXXI-Eternal Love"
• Samuel Sidney McClure (1857–1949), Irish-American editor and publisher, who organized the first syndicated newspaper in the U.S. (the "McClure Syndicate," 1884);
• Andrew Barton Paterson (1864–1941), Australian WWI correspondent and light-verse poet, who adapted "Waltzing Matilda", Australia's national song;
• Dorothy Canfield (1879), U.S. novelist, review of The Bed Quilt and Other Stories
• Margaret Truman (1924), Missouri-born mystery writer and Harry Truman's daughter;
• Chaim Potok (1929), Jewish Bronx-born novelist
• Ruth Rendell (1930), aka Barbara Vine, British mystery writer

18th

• Sholem Aleichem (1859), Ukraine-born Yiddish author, author of the short stories on which the libretto for "Fiddler on the Roof" was based
• Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957), Greek novelist, journalist, and politician, best known internationally for novels Zorba the Greek (1943) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1951)
• Wendell Willkie (1892–1944), author and presidential candidate
• Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), Iowa-born novelist, critic, and 1971 Pulitzer Prize winner, called "the dean of Western writers"
• Virginia Kahl (1919)
• Helen Gurley Brown (1922), Arkansas-born editor and writer, who wrote Sex and the Single Girl and edited Cosmopolitan magazine
• Toni Morrison (1931), born Chloe Anthony Wofford, Ohio-born African American novelist, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the Pulitzer in 1987
• Audre [Geraldine] Lorde (1934–1992), aka Rey Domini, NYC native, African American poet, essayist, novelist, and autobiographer, a prominent feminist and gay rights advocate
• Barbara Joosse (1949)

19th

• David Garrick (1717), actor, producer, and writer
• Élie Ducommun (1833–1906), Swiss writer and pacifist, 1902 Nobel peace prize winner
• Jose Eustasio Rivera (1889), Colombian poet and novelist
• Andre Breton (1896–1966), French surrealist founder and theorist, writer, co-founder with Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and David Hare the American surrealist magazine VVV
• Kay Boyle (1902–1992), Minnesota-born novelist
• Louis Slobodkin (1903–1975)
• Carson McCullers (1917–1967) , née Lula Carson Smith, Georgia-born novelist
• Jill Krementz (1940)
• Amy Tan (1952), California-born Chinese-American novelist, whose first book was The Joy Luck Club

20th

• Pieter Cornelis Boutens (1870–1943), Dutch mystic poet
• Shiga Naoya (1883–1971), Japanese novelist
• [Edward] Hesketh [Gibbons] Pearson (1887–1964), English biographer, actor, director, and playwright
• Georges Bernanos (1888–1948), French novelist
• Russel Crouse (1893–1966), journalist and playwright, longtime play writing and producing partner of Howard Lindsay, with whom he won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize in drama for "State of the Union"
• Ophelia Egypt (1903)
• Rosemary Harris (1923)
• Alex La Guma (1925–1985), South African novelist
• Mary Blount Christian (1933)

21st

• Jose Zorrilla y Moral (1817–1893), Spanish poet and dramatist
• Charles Scribner (1821), publisher
• Anaïs Nin (1903–1977), novelist and diarist
• W[ystan] H[ugh] Auden, U.S. poet, winner of 1948 Pulitzer (1907-1973)
• Erma Bombeck (1927–1996), Ohio-born humorist and syndicated columnist
• Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve (1934)
• Barbara [Charline] Jordan (1936–1996), Texas politician and autobiographer
• Patricia Hermes (1936)
• Jim Aylesworth (1943)

22nd

• Roma Gans (1894)
• Harry Kullman (1919–1982)
• James Russell Lowell (1819; Abraham Lincoln), poet, critic, and abolitionist
• Jules Renard (1864–1910), French writer
• Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950), Maine poet and Pulitzer prize winner
• Giorgios Seferis (1900–1971), Greek poet and 1963 Nobelist
• Sean O'Faolain, aka John Francis Whelan, (1900–1991), Irish short story writer
• Morley Callaghan (1903; photo of Callaghan), Canadian author
• Jane [Auer] Bowles (1917–1974), NYC-born short story writer and novelist
• Edward St. John Gorey (1925–2000), Chicago-born author and artist of the macabre
• Ishmael [Scott] Reed (1938), Tennessee native (New York-raised) novelist, essayist, poet, and editor, known for his satiric commentaries and parodies

23rd

• C(arole). S. Adler (1932)
• Eric Kastner (1899–1974)
• Walter Wick (1953)
• Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), English diarist
• W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt] Du Bois (1868–1963), Massachusetts-born Ghanaian writer, The Souls of Black Folk
• Erich Kastner (1899–1974), German children's author
• William L. Shirer (1904–1993), Chicago-born historian and radio journalist, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• Haki R. Madhubuti (1942) born Don Luther Lee, Arkansas native, African American poet, essayist, critic, and publisher, a leading voice in the black arts movement

24th

• Mary Ellen Chase (1887–1973), Maine educator and author
• Uri Orlev (1931)
• Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786–1859), librarian, literary historian, and with his brother, Jacob Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales collaborator
• George Moore (1852–1933), Irish novelist;
• Temple Bailey (1869-1953), American novelist
• Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski (1885–1944), Polish novelist
• August William Derleth (1909–1971), Wisconsin writer

25th

• Helen Brodie Bannerman (1862–1946)
• Frank Bonham (1914)
• True Kelley (1946)
• Iain Lawrence
• Cynthia Voigt (1942)
• Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793), Italian dramatist
• George Samuel Schuyler (1895–1977), Rhode Island native, African American novelist, journalist, and reporter, best known for his satirical novel Black No More; Being An Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free (1931)
• Frank Slaughter (1908), author
• Anthony Burgess (1917–1993), essayist, novelist, and musician, author of A Clockwork Orange;
• Shiva[dhar] Srinivasa Naipaul (1945–1985), Trinidad-born journalist, novelist and travel writer

26th

• Sharon Bell Mathis (1937)
• Colby Rodowsky (1932)
• Jean St. George (1931)
• Bernard Wolf (1930)
• Miriam Young (1913)
• Victor [Marie] Hugo (1802–1885), French novelist, playwright, and Romantic poet, exiled to the Channel Islands during Napoleon's reign, author of Les Miserables (1862)
• John George Nicolay (1832–1901), U.S. author, Lincoln's private secretary and biographer
• Jean Vercors (1902) aka Marcel Bruller, French writer
• Theodore Sturgeon born Edward Hamilton Waldo (1918–1985), science fiction writer

27th

• Florence Parry Heide (1919)
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
• Laura Richards (1850–1943)
• Uri Shulevitz (1935)
• Mary Frances Shura (1923)
• Angelina Weld Grimke (1880–1958), Boston-born African American dramatist and poet
• John Steinbeck, Calif. novelist and 1962 Nobelist (1902–1968)
• James Thomas Farrell (1904–1979), Chicago native, novelist and short story writer
• Peter DeVries (1910), Chicago author
• Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990), India-born British novelist, authored The Alexandria Quartet
• Irwin Shaw (1913–1984), U.S. novelist

28th

• Megan McDonald (1959)
• Donna Jo Napoli (1948)
• Michel de Montaigne (1533), French essayist
• John Tenniel (1820–1914), English cartoonist and Alice-in-Wonderland illustrator
• Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866; old style birthdate is 16 Feb.–1949), Russian poet in the Symbolist movement, linguist, and literary scholar
• Maurice Renard (1875-1939), French science fiction writer
• Ben Hecht (1894), NYC-born, Wisconsin-raised screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, novelist, and journalist
• Stephen Spender (1909–1995), English poet and critic
• Don[ald] Coldsmith (1926), Kansas native, physician, syndicated newspaper columnist, and historical novelist

29th

• David Raymond Collins (1940)
• Patricia McKillip (1948)
• Susan L. Roth (1944)