March 17 Writer Birthdays

1819 – Sarah Carter Edgarton Mayo, American author, editor, and poet.

1820 – Jean Ingelow, English poet, novelist, and children’s writer.

1826 – Oscar Ferdinand Peschel, German geographer and anthropologist, most remembered for his book The Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution, which classifies humans into seven races.

1832 – Moncure Daniel Conway, American clergyman, abolitionist, scholar, author, and Thomas Paine biographer, known for his outspoken opposition to slavery.

1846 – Kate Greenaway, iconic English author and illustrator of children’s books.

1894 – Paul Green, Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright.

1898 – Yokomitsu Riichi, experimental Japanese author of the New Sensation School.

1917 – Arthur Basil Cottle, Welsh grammarian, historian, archaeologist, antiquarian, Medievalist, and reference-book writer.

1920 – Olga Orozco (real name Olga Noemí Gugliotta), award-winning Argentine poet, screenwriter, translator, and journalist.

1927 – Kenneth S. Goldstein, American folklorist, educator, and ethnomusicologist.

1933 – Penelope Lively, Booker Prize-winning British author of fiction for children and adults.

1947 – James Morrow, American science-fiction, fantasy, and literary author whose fiction is sometimes satirical.

1948 – William Gibson, American-Canadian speculative fiction author who coined the term “cyberpunk.”

1956 – Patrick McDonnell, American children’s author and cartoonist.

1972 – Ana Cecilia Blum, Ecuadorian writer, poet, and journalist.