Mark Twain’s house was burgled in 1908. This was the letter that was subsequently posted to the front door.
Thanks, Letters of Note.
Image: Stanley Gould
Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing, via The Trad
Know them. Love them.
Amen.
"Ah, good conversation - there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing."
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
"Each time you happen to me all over again. "
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
"You thought I was a lovelorn mistress and I was really just an expensive prostitute."
— Edith Wharton, “New Year’s Day” in Old New York
Edith was also very fond of her dogs.
"What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath."
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Happy Birthday to Edith Wharton, First Lady of Scribner
Today is the 150th Anniversary of Wharton’s birth (that’s 1862, English majors).
She was employed by Scribner’s Magazine to report on World War I, and was one of the few foreigners allowed to travel through France to the front lines.
She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, for The Age of Innocence, in 1921.
She is buried in the American Cemetery, in Versailles.
She once said,
“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”
