I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [12]
☞ EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849)
Poe’s major success, The Raven, was published two years before the death of his first wife (his 13-year-old first cousin). After this unfortunate event and scandalous allegations of amorous indiscretions, Poe became dejected and began drinking. Two years later he was scraped off the streets of Baltimore, sick and delirious, and he died soon after. His wife’s death influenced his writing, such as in Annabel Lee. Poe has a long list of bone-chilling stories, including The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Pit and the Pendulum. Many of his tales were adapted for film in the 1960s and starred horror legend Vincent Price.
☞ J. D. SALINGER (1919-2010)
The reclusive Salinger’s biggest success is The Catcher in the Rye, the ultimate disaffected-teenager novel. It is told in the first person by sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, who loathes everything to do with his life and his parents’ “phony” middle-class values. Although the novel was written in 1951, it remains popular and sells approximately 250,000 copies a year.
☞ JOHN STEINBECK (1920-68)
While growing up Steinbeck worked as a hired hand on nearby ranches, which fostered his impressions of the California countryside and its people. These thoughts contributed to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath. The book tells the story of the Joad family, who after the Oklahoma dust bowl disaster of the 1930s abandon their land and head for what they imagine is “Promised Land” in California, only to find that life is no easier there. His novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row also achieved critical acclaim.
☞ HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-96)
Best known as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a violent antislavery novel (published in 1852, when this was the political hot potato in America). According to legend, when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!” Her writing career spanned 51 years, during which she published 30 books and countless shorter pieces as well as raising seven children. A year after she and her family moved into their Hartford, Connecticut house, Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, moved into a house just across the lawn.
☞ HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-62)
Sometimes called the father of environmentalism, he stated, “Thank God men cannot fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.” He retreated to the woodland, isolating himself from society and wrote Walden, an account of simple living in natural surroundings. He also wrote an essay on Civil Disobedience after being arrested for not paying his taxes, which he did to protest slavery and the Mexican-American War.
☞ MARK TWAIN (1835-1910)
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
Drawing on his experience as a river pilot, this author’s pen name comes from a riverboat term for two fathoms or 12 feet when the depth of water is sounded; “Mark twain” means that it is safe to navigate. Although Twain was also a popular humorist, satirist, and lecturer, he is best known as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which drew on his childhood in the Mississippi River port of Hannibal, Missouri, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a much more serious book—sometimes called the Great American Novel—that had the issue of slavery at its heart.
☞ BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856-1915)
A former slave, freed after the Civil War, this author and educator worked tirelessly through school. He later became a noted educator and major proponent of education and rights for African Americans, working to establish vocational schools so they could learn trades, obtain jobs, and bolster their standing in society. The details of his life can