January 18 Writer Birthdays

1779 – Peter Mark Roget, British thesaurus developer and physician.

1867 – Rubén Darío, born Félix Rubén Garcia-Sarmiento, Nicaraguan poet and short-story writer.

1882 – A.A. Milne, British playwright, screenwriter, humor writer, and children’s author, best known for his Winnie the Pooh books and other children’s poetry.

1886 – Clara Nordström, maiden name and pseudonym of Clara Elisabet von Vegesack, Swedish-born German writer and translator.

1891 – Clare Winger Harris, early science-fiction writer whose short stories were published during the 1920s; she is credited as the first woman to publish stories under her own name in science-fiction magazines.

1893 – Jorge Guillén y Álvarez, Spanish poet, scholar, and literary critic.

1901 – Tomoyoshi Murayama, Japanese artist, playwright, and drama producer.

1911 – José María Arguedas Altamirano, Peruvian novelist, poet, short-story writer, and anthropologist; though of Spanish descent, he was fluent in the native Quechua language and wrote in both Spanish and Quechua. He is considered one of the key figures in 20th-century Peruvian literature.

1912 – William Sansom, British writer of novels, short stories, and travel books.

1914 – Vitomil Zupan, Slovenian writer, poet, playwright, essayist and screenwriter who was one of the most important authors in the Slovene language of the second half of the 20th century; he also wrote under the pseudonym Langus.

1932 – Robert Anton Wilson, American novelist, essayist, editor, playwright, and self-described agnostic mystic, whose most well known work is his Illuminatus trilogy.

1934 – Raymond Briggs, English children’s author and illustrator whose wordless book The Snowman is a Christmas classic.

1951 – Sally Morgan, Australian aboriginal artist and author.

1971 – Carolyn Parkhurst, bestselling American author of novels and children’s books.