James Joyce and Nora Barnacle probably had their first date on June 16, 1904, Bloomsday, the day on which Ulysses (1922) is set.
She was then a chambermaid at Finn’s Hotel, Dublin.
The name Swift gave to his race of rational horses in Gulliver’s Travels is spelt Houyhnhnms. Their subjects, a race of nasty human-like creatures, had an easier name: Yahoos.
The author of the novels Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987) Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford.
The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was Edith Wharton (1862-1937) in 1921 for The Age of Innocence.
New Jersey novelist Edward Stratemeyer created the Bobbsey Twins, under the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope.
Three novels comprise John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga: 1. The Man of Property (1906) 2. In Chancery (1920) 3. To Let (1921) and two “interludes”: 1. Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1922) 2. Awakenings (1922)
Thomas Shadwell was refer to as “Mac Flecknoe”, a playwright whose work John Dryden despised. Dryden satirized Shadwell as the son of (“Mac”) Richard Flecknoe, another bad contemporary poet.