Calendar of Literary Facts

April 5...

1588: Thomas Hobbes is born

1837: Algernon Charles Swinburne is born

1856: Booker T. Washington is born

1904: Richard Eberhart is born

1920: Arthur Hailey is born

1926: H. L. Mencken is arrested for selling a copy of The American Mercury to the secretary of the Boston Watch and Ward Society; the offending issue contained the story “Hatrack,” which the Society deemed obscene

1935: Edwin Arlington Robinson dies

1997: Allen Ginsberg dies

2004: Doug Wright receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for I Am My Own Wife

2005: Saul Bellow dies