Nothing happened today, though The Booklover’s Almanac tells me Mark Twain’s first famous story, under its original title of “Jim Smiley and His Famous Frog,” was published in the Saturday Press of New York on this date in 1865.
Daily Reading:
- Joseph Conrad [excerpt from the first chapter of his A Personal Record, 1912]
From the editor’s forward:
It is not often that the works of a writer during his lifetime are accorded an estimate of permanency such has been almost universally accorded the books of Joseph Conrad. Acclaimed by the literary critics of Europe and America as on of the greatest living masters of English prose, if not the greatest, he gives to his creations the touch of genius of which literary immortality is the inevitable and rightful heritage.
Pocket University Vol. XVII Pt. 1 pg. 147
He was born in the Ukraine. I do not think I have ever read any Conrad (not his Ukrainian name). And skimming through the autobiographical excerpt, I can understand why. Curious if others have a different opinion. Am I missing something?
The Booklover’s Almanac. Robert Brittain, ed. Frederic C. Beil, Publisher, New York. 1971.
