Judi’s Reviews > A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year > Status Update
Judi
is on page 391 of 448
December 12
1970 The Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, whose constucton Philip Larkin, as head librarian, had carefully overseen for fifteen years, and which he described to Barbara Pam the year before as "an odd building with a curious glaring drabness and far too little space," was officially opened.
— Dec 12, 2025 02:31PM
1970 The Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, whose constucton Philip Larkin, as head librarian, had carefully overseen for fifteen years, and which he described to Barbara Pam the year before as "an odd building with a curious glaring drabness and far too little space," was officially opened.
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Judi’s Previous Updates
Judi
is on page 398 of 448
December 19
1936 Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship to collect the folklore she'd describe in Tell My Horse but for a short time there she was consumed instead with her second novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which she finished on this day. "It was dammed up in me,: she recalled, "and I wrote it under internal pressure in seven weeks." What was pushing to be expressed? Memories ...
— Dec 20, 2025 06:04AM
1936 Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship to collect the folklore she'd describe in Tell My Horse but for a short time there she was consumed instead with her second novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which she finished on this day. "It was dammed up in me,: she recalled, "and I wrote it under internal pressure in seven weeks." What was pushing to be expressed? Memories ...
Judi
is on page 397 of 448
December 18
1818 A month or so after writing to his brother and sister-in-law, newly emigrated to America, that the "generality of women ... appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a Sugar Plum than my time," John Keats met Fanny Brawn. "Shall I give you Miss Browne?" he wrote on tis day in his next long letter to America. His assessment: "Her mouth is bad and good...her shape is very graceful and ...
— Dec 18, 2025 06:55PM
1818 A month or so after writing to his brother and sister-in-law, newly emigrated to America, that the "generality of women ... appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a Sugar Plum than my time," John Keats met Fanny Brawn. "Shall I give you Miss Browne?" he wrote on tis day in his next long letter to America. His assessment: "Her mouth is bad and good...her shape is very graceful and ...
Judi
is on page 396 of 448
December 17
1929 Toad of Toad Hall, A. A. Milne's stage adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, premiered in London.
— Dec 18, 2025 05:44PM
1929 Toad of Toad Hall, A. A. Milne's stage adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, premiered in London.
Judi
is on page 395 of 448
December 16
1865 The Anthenaeum on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: "We fancy that any child might be more puzzled than enchanted by this stiff, overwrought story."
— Dec 16, 2025 09:39AM
1865 The Anthenaeum on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: "We fancy that any child might be more puzzled than enchanted by this stiff, overwrought story."
Judi
is on page 394 of 448
December 15
1960 On the third day of the unsuccessful coup against Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, with the emperor still absent from the capital city and his inner circle held hostage in the palace, General Mengistu Newal, a leader of the coup, held up a piece of dry bread to the students at Haile Selassie University and said, "This is what we feed to the dignitaries today, so they will know what our people ...
— Dec 16, 2025 06:47AM
1960 On the third day of the unsuccessful coup against Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, with the emperor still absent from the capital city and his inner circle held hostage in the palace, General Mengistu Newal, a leader of the coup, held up a piece of dry bread to the students at Haile Selassie University and said, "This is what we feed to the dignitaries today, so they will know what our people ...
Judi
is on page 393 of 448
December 14
1951 The "quiet American" in Graham Greene's novel by that name is Alden Pyle, the disastrously idealistic Harvard grad full of theories about Indochina, but the ugliest American in the book is the bullying, cynical reporter name Granger. Green denied the other characters in The Quiet American had real-life models, but Granger, he admitted, was based directly on an American reporter named Larry Allen,...
— Dec 15, 2025 07:48PM
1951 The "quiet American" in Graham Greene's novel by that name is Alden Pyle, the disastrously idealistic Harvard grad full of theories about Indochina, but the ugliest American in the book is the bullying, cynical reporter name Granger. Green denied the other characters in The Quiet American had real-life models, but Granger, he admitted, was based directly on an American reporter named Larry Allen,...
Judi
is on page 392 of 448
December 13
1936 Knowing only the abstract characters and landscapes of Samuel Becketts plays, it's surprising to learn that earlier in his career, long before Waiting for Godot was first produced, he filled notebooks with his plans for a play about the relationship between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrall. "Can't think why there hasn't been a film of Johnson, with [Charles] Laughton," he wrote to a friend on ...
— Dec 13, 2025 08:01PM
1936 Knowing only the abstract characters and landscapes of Samuel Becketts plays, it's surprising to learn that earlier in his career, long before Waiting for Godot was first produced, he filled notebooks with his plans for a play about the relationship between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrall. "Can't think why there hasn't been a film of Johnson, with [Charles] Laughton," he wrote to a friend on ...
Judi
is on page 390 of 448
December 11
1934 In a movement built on personal testimony, the first confession was Bill W.'s, the stock investor in New York who on this day, with his drinking destroying his career and his life, bought four beers at a grocery to keep himself from going into withdrawal on the way to a Manhattan drying-out clinic. He'd checked into the clinic three times before, but this time those beers he bought became his last..
— Dec 12, 2025 05:03AM
1934 In a movement built on personal testimony, the first confession was Bill W.'s, the stock investor in New York who on this day, with his drinking destroying his career and his life, bought four beers at a grocery to keep himself from going into withdrawal on the way to a Manhattan drying-out clinic. He'd checked into the clinic three times before, but this time those beers he bought became his last..
Judi
is on page 389 of 448
December 10
1896 The tumult that erupts when Fermin Gémier, costumed in an enormous paper-mâché belly, stepped onstage at the Theatre l'Oeuvre and pronounced the first word of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roy—"Merdre!"—was not entirely spontaneous. In addition to much of literary Paris—Colette, Yeats, and Gide were all there—Jarry packed his opening night with a friendly rabble he instructed to howl if the rest of the...
— Dec 11, 2025 07:53AM
1896 The tumult that erupts when Fermin Gémier, costumed in an enormous paper-mâché belly, stepped onstage at the Theatre l'Oeuvre and pronounced the first word of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roy—"Merdre!"—was not entirely spontaneous. In addition to much of literary Paris—Colette, Yeats, and Gide were all there—Jarry packed his opening night with a friendly rabble he instructed to howl if the rest of the...
Judi
is on page 388 of 448
December 9
1874 "I DON'T KNOW WHETHER I AM OGING TO MAKE THIS TYPE-WRITING MACHINE GO OR NTO," Mark Twain wrote William Dean Howells on his new capital-letters-only typewriter. "THAT LAST WORD WAS INTEDRED FOR N-NOT: BUT I GUESS I SHALL MAKE SOM SORT OF A SUCC SS O IT BEFORE I RUN IT VERY LO G. I AM SO THICK-FINGERED THAT I MISS THE KEYS."
— Dec 11, 2025 07:39AM
1874 "I DON'T KNOW WHETHER I AM OGING TO MAKE THIS TYPE-WRITING MACHINE GO OR NTO," Mark Twain wrote William Dean Howells on his new capital-letters-only typewriter. "THAT LAST WORD WAS INTEDRED FOR N-NOT: BUT I GUESS I SHALL MAKE SOM SORT OF A SUCC SS O IT BEFORE I RUN IT VERY LO G. I AM SO THICK-FINGERED THAT I MISS THE KEYS."
