Legendary Western novelist Zane Grey, best known for Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), was born today in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1872. Before his death in 1939, he had produced nearly 90 books, many of them adapted for film (such as The Last Trail with Tom Mix, 1927). During an eight-year period (1917 to 1924), a Grey book appeared on the bestseller list every year.
The Australian crime fiction blog has listed favorite Australian mysteries of 2007, including the intriguing El Dorado by Dorothy Porter, "crime fiction in verse."
In conjunction with its revival of Present Laughter, Britain's National Theatre honors writer, director, actor, playwright, and composer Noel Coward with an exhibition, "Star Quality," through March. For further information, go here. For BBC interview clips with Coward, go here. For his inimitable performance of "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," go here.
As a BookTV junkie, I watched a program on Jason Emerson's new book The Madness of Mary Lincoln, which deals with the often misunderstood mental illness of the wife of the 16th president. Her son, Robert Todd Lincoln, tends to be demonized for institutionalizing her; Emerson explains in an even-handed fashion the difficult situation in which Robert found himself, Mary's severe trauma via the violent death of her husband and the deaths of most of her children, her medical treatment, and her attitude toward her confinement as evidenced in her letters.
Somerset Maugham was born today in Paris in 1874 and died in 1965. Although Maugham is known for works such as Cakes and Ale, Of Human Bondage, and The Painted Veil, those that resonate in mystery annals are Ashenden, featuring the spy inspired by Maugham's World War I experiences and later played by John Gielgud (in Hitchcock's Secret Agent) and Alex Jennings (in Ashenden), and The Letter, where Bette Davis so memorably blew away her lover in the opening scene.
Edith Wharton—author of Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and The Age of Innocence; friend of Henry James; and a relative of mystery author Frances Newbold Noyes Hart—was born today in 1862. She died in 1937.
The Telegraph's list of 100 Books Every Child Should Read includes Roald Dahl (5 entries), Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek, H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, and Charles Portis's True Grit.
What—no Freddy the Detective?
Writer-poet Richard Le Gallienne was born today in Liverpool in 1866 and died in 1947. The father of legendary actress Eva Le Gallienne, he had a substantial literary career starting in the Mauve Decade and eventually produced some 40 volumes of poetry, nonfiction works, and novels. A reader for the Bodley Head and a good friend of mystery author Grant Allen, he also was a critic, writing for newspapers such as the London Star, the New York Sun, and the New York Times. According to Richard Whittington-Egan in the August 2003 Contemporary Review, Le Gallienne, living in France in considerable difficulty during World War II, was offered various incentives to broadcast for the Germans but he rejected their overtures."...to the writer life seems still more real, and how much finer, as he lives it—in the starlight of words."—Richard Le Gallienne, Attitudes and Avowals (1910) 164
Strangers on a Train author Patricia Highsmith (and the creator of the creepy Mr. Ripley) was born today in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921.
The Library of Congress has posted online highlights from its Works Progress Administration collection of posters. It spans the years 1936 to 1943.
For those suffering from primary fatigue, have a look back at perpetual candidate for president Pat Paulsen. Go here for video and audio clips as well as texts of Paulsen's editorials from the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Gilbert Magazine, a publication of the American Chesterton Society, has posted an "Open Letter to the Agatha Christie Estate" by Chris Chan that criticizes the latest Miss Marple adaptations now airing on PBS. Says Chan, "When productions imply that Christie adaptations are only watchable if sex and violence is added, the battle for respectability is already lost." Similar howls of outrage were heard on DorothyL after Tuppence Beresford--hardly a mess as an accomplished spy and former World War I nurse--was portrayed as a lush by Greta Scacchi in the new adaptation of By the Pricking of My Thumbs. The discussion on the Mystery! board is equally negative, not least for the fact that many of the plots bear no resemblance to the original texts (such as the adaptation of Nemesis).
Rue Morgue Press announced reprints of HQ listers Manning Coles (aka Cyril Henry Coles and Adelaide Frances Oke Manning) and John Dickson Carr (aka Carter Dickson; pictured at left). The Coles title is Pray Silence (1940), featuring spy Tommy Hambledon; the Carr titles are The Judas Window and The Crooked Hinge (both 1938). Pray Silence is slated for February; the Carr titles slated for March.
British novelist Margaret Storm Jameson was born today in Whitby in 1891. Before her death in 1986, she had produced more than 40 novels and a two-volume autobiography, Journey from the North (1969-70). Cambridge Scholars Publishing has recently issued a collection of critical essays on her work, Margaret Storm Jameson: Writing in Dialogue (2007).
Michael over at 2blowhards recently stated, 
The 39 Steps, a stage production of Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film (which loosely adapted John Buchan's famous 1915 thriller), is now playing at the American Airlines Theater via the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City. It runs through March 23rd.
Harvard Law Library has a new digital collection, Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders, of more than 500 broadsides that were sold to witnesses of public executions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. These include an 1808 account of mutiny, the execution of Fenians for killing a police officer in 1867, and the confession of Constance Kent for murdering her half-brother in 1860 (the case is the basis for Such Bitter Business by Elbur Ford, aka Victoria Holt).
Author Michael Bond plans to mark Paddington Bear's 50th anniversary with a new book, Paddington Here and Now, scheduled to be published in June. In it, the marmalade-loving bear faces arrest by police, who have questions about his immigration status (you may recall that Paddington originally hails from Peru, where his Aunt Lucy lives in a Home for Retired Bears). For further details, go here.
Science fiction legend Isaac Asimov was born today in Russia in 1920. He died in 1992.. . .in the 21st century, if we survive, we can imagine that our technological society will advance even further. There will be even more computerization and automation. The dull work of the world will be done by machines. Men and women themselves will be able to do the kind of work they want to do. Undoubtedly, some of them will want to be research scientists, or symphony conductors, or they will want to be great artists, or writers. . . . There will be enough people who will want to be that, and there will be people who will want to learn how to bowl perfectly, or how to collect leaves, or how to build battleships out of toothpicks. What's the difference? Whatever it is you do that makes you happy, and adds to the joyousness of the world, is justified.—Isaac Asimov, 1974.
