Writers Gone Wild

On this day in 1891, Henrik Ibsen’s play “Ghosts” opened for one night only at The Independent Theatre in London. The play had run into trouble with the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, which licensed plays, because it mentioned venereal disease, so J.T. Grein, a Dutchman, formed a private theatrical company to get around the threatened ban. […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #17 for March 13: Henrik Ibsen, Norman Mailer and William Styron, and Kitty Genovese appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1901, millionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie offers New York City $5.2 million to build 65 branch libraries. He had sold that year the Carnegie Steel Company for $250 million and, at the age of 66, decided to retire and devote himself to giving his money away. He eventually would help create more […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #16 for March 12: Andrew Carnegie, Roald Dahl and Robert Ludlum appeared first on Bill Peschel.

Before we get into today’s episode, the podcast will drop Monday through Friday from now on, to give me more time to work on it and other projects as well. Now back to your literary gossip … It is the 710th wedding anniversary today of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, married in a secret ceremony […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #15 for March 11: Romeo and Juliet, Mary Shelley, Lorraine Hansbury and Douglas Adams appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1812, three years after attacking his critics in print, the first two cantos of Lord Byron’s Romantic epic “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” were published. The narrative poem created the Byronic hero: intelligent, perceptive, romantic and opposed to authority. Much of Byron’s life and travels were mined for the work. Born with a […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #14 for March 10: Lord Byron and Zelda Fitzgerald appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1765, Voltaire succeeded in getting a French court to exonerate a Huguenot cloth merchant, Jean Calas, of the murder of his son in Toulouse. It was a legal victory marred only by the man’s horrific execution three years before. The Calas family were members of the city’s minority Protestant group. One […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #13 for March 9: Voltaire, Lord Byron and Virginia Woolf appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1932, Henry Miller took Anaïs Nin to a Paris hotel room where they made love for the first time. He was an impoverished writer who moved with his wife, June, to Paris, and she an aspiring writer married to a banker. She wrote in her diary that she thought Henry was […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #12 for March 8: Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, Thomas Wolfe, Sherwood Anderson and Jim Bouton appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1923, Robert Frost’s most famous poem, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” was published in the New Republic. He was living in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, at the time, tired of the academic life and wanting to reconnect to the land and his farm. In mid-summer the previous year, he had […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #11 for March 7: Robert Frost, 2 Live Crew appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1888, Louisa May Alcott, the author of “Little Women,” died at the age of 55, on the day of her father’s burial. She had worked from an early age to support her family. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a philosopher and reformer said to be so brilliant in conversation that people […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #10 for March 6: Louisa May Alcott, John Stuart Mill and Dylan Thomas appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1839, Charlotte Bronte wrote a letter. Rev. Henry Nussey, the brother of her best friend, Ellen, had asked for her hand in marriage. There were a number of reason why she should accept — at 23 she was past the bloom of youth, he was a kind man and she would […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #9 for March 5: Charlotte Bronte, Dylan Thomas and Tom Clancy appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1887, Anne Sullivan began teaching six year old Helen Keller how to connect to a world she could neither see nor hear. She began by spelling the letters to the word “doll” into her hand, trying to get her to understand that important ideas that letters make up words and words […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #7 for March 3: Helen Keller, Anthony Comstock, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur Koestler appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1930, D.H. Lawrence died at his rented home in Vence, France. Two days later, he was buried in the town cemetery. It was not to be his final resting place. The man who suffered from ill-health most of his life, who caused controversy for novels such as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #6 for March 2: D.H. Lawrence, Juvenal, Tom Wolfe and Dr. Seuss appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1360, the Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe paid £16, the equivalent about $15,000 to ransom a soldier who had been captured in the Burgundy region during Edward III’s invasion of France. The soldier was Geoffrey Chaucer, about 17 years old and a follower of one of the king’s sons. Chaucer had […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #5 for March 1: Geoffrey Chaucer, James Murray and Astounding Science Fiction appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1996, Joan Collins struck a blow for writers everywhere when a judge ruled that her publisher, Random House, should pay her an extra million dollars on top of a partial advance of $1.2 million for two crap books that she had been contracted to write. Years before, Random House had agreed […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #4 for Feb. 29: Joan Collins, Hattie McDaniel, the Family Circus, Tony Robbins appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1749, Henry Fielding’s monumental novel “Tom Jones” was published, and helped establish the book as a means of conveying entertainment and enlightenment. A longtime lawyer and judge, Fielding also wrote satires that were performed on stage and distributed in pamphlets and books. “Tom Jones” was a romance about a good-hearted foundling […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #3 for Feb. 28: Henry Fielding, Upton Sinclair and Ben Hecht appeared first on Bill Peschel.

This is Writers Gone Wild for Sunday, February 26, 2012. On this day in 1956, poet Sylvia Plath looked across a crowded room at a literary party and saw, as she later wrote, “the one man in the room who was as big as his poems.” He, of course, was Ted Hughes, and this encounter […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #2 for Feb. 26: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Christopher Marlowe and Theodore Sturgeon appeared first on Bill Peschel.

On this day in 1904, John Millington Synge’s play “Riders of the Sea” premiered at Molesworth Hall in Dublin by the Irish National Theatre Society. Set on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, the one-act tragedy portrays the struggles of a widow ? who has lost her fisherman husband and most of […] The post Writers Gone Wild Podcast #1: John Millington Synge, Victor Hugo and P.G. Wodehouse appeared first on Bill Peschel.