Calendar of Literary Facts
December 22...
1639: Jean Racine is born
1849: Fedor Dostoevsky and several other condemned men, members of the allegedly subversive “Petrashevsky Circle,” face the firing squad, but are spared by a last-minute stay of execution
1869: Edwin Arlington Robinson is born
1870: Gustavo Adolfo Becquer dies
1875: Thomas Mofolo is born
1880: Mary Ann Evans Cross (George Eliot) dies
1905: Kenneth Rexroth is born
1943: Beatrix Potter dies
1989: Samuel Beckett dies