Category: Deaths

Famous people who died today

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Died on this day/mort ce jour-là 20 April 1912

Bram Stoker

Abraham “Bram” Stoker was born in Dublin on 8 November 1847 and is best known today for his 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned.
     In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty whose former suitor had been Oscar Wilde. The Stokers moved to London where Stoker took his post at the Lyceum Theatre – a post he held for 27 years. His first novel was published in 1890.
     The speculation that Stoker was a repressed homosexual was only increased by the homoerotic aspects of his most famous novel, Dracula, which was published in 1897.
     Stoker had suffered a number of strokes and in April 1912 he took a holiday to recuperate in Montmorillon in France. He was impressed by the mixture of shops in the Cité de l’Ecrit and particularly taken by The Glass Key bookshop, with its wide range of books on display and by the bookshop’s cat Chairman Miaow. It was in Montmorillon that he suffered his final and fatal stroke and died on 20 April 1912.

*It is rumoured that some of the ‘facts’ in the last paragraph may not be entirely true.

Abraham “Bram” Stoker est né à Dublin le 8 novembre 1847 et est surtout connu aujourd’hui pour son roman d’horreur gothique Dracula de 1897. Au cours de sa vie, il était mieux connu comme assistant personnel de l’acteur Sir Henry Irving et directeur commercial du Lyceum Theatre, dont Irving était propriétaire.
En 1878, Stoker épousa Florence Balcombe, une beauté célèbre dont l’ancien prétendant avait été Oscar Wilde. Les Stokers ont déménagé à Londres où Stoker a pris son poste au Lyceum Theatre – un poste qu’il a occupé pendant 27 ans. Son premier roman a été publié en 1890.</

La spéculation selon laquelle Stoker était un homosexuel réprimé n’a été augmentée que par les aspects homoérotiques de son roman le plus célèbre, Dracula, qui a été publié en 1897.

Stoker avait subi un certain nombre de attaque d’apoplexie et en avril 1912, il prit des vacances pour récupérer à Montmorillon en France. Il a été impressionné par le mélange de boutiques de la Cité de l’Ecrit et particulièrement par la librairie The Glass Key, avec sa large gamme de livres exposés, et par le chat de la librairie, Chairman Miaow. C’est à Montmorillon qu’il subit son ultime et fatal accident vasculaire cérébral et décède le 20 avril 1912.

* Selon la rumeur, certains des «faits» du dernier paragraphe pourraient ne pas être entièrement vrais.
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Deaths

Died on this day – 29 June 1315

Llull

It was on the 29 June 1315 that the Catalan mathematician, polymath, philosopher, logician, Franciscan teriary and writer from the Kingdom of Majorca was stoned to death in the Place du Vieux Marché in the heart of the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon. The reasons for the stoning remain a mystery.  Dan Brown has some interesting theories about this, and the Rosicrucian origins of The Glass Key (home of good books) seem to have been involved also.

Llull was a prolific writer with a total of more than 250 works to his name written in Catalan, Latin and Arabic. Ars Magnais his most profound and celebrated work, but he is also known as the author of the romantic novel Blanquerna (1283) which is widely considered the first major work of literature written in Catalan, and possibly the first European novel.

Some computer scientists have adopted Llull as a sort of founding father, claiming that his system of logic was the beginning of information science.

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Died on this day – 17 June 1947

Perkins

The legendary book editor Maxwell Perkins died in Montmorillon on 17 June 1947. Perkins was responsible for launching the writing careers of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins was also responsible for being the first to publish the work of J. P. Marquand, Erskine Childers, Alan Paton and James Jones. Through his connection with The Glass Key bookshop in the Cité de l’Ecrit Perkins had come to Montmorillon to try and add the crime writer Keith Dixon to his list. Dixon had a growing reputation with a number of self-published crime novels to his name and Perkins was hoping add him to his stable of published successes. Unfortunately his pneumonia caught up with him and he died before completing any deal.

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Died on this day – 14 June 1986

Borges

 

Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires on 24 August 1899. He was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator. His best-known books, Fictions and The Aleph, published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, philosophy, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology. Borges’ works have been considered by some critics to mark the beginning of the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature. In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett.

In 1986 Borges took a trip to Montmorillon with a view to exploring the famously transient labyrinth hidden in the gardens of the Maison Dieu and reputed to provide a home for the dragon La Grande Goule, exiled from Poitiers and cared for by Theseus and Ariadne Nemo. During his visit, through the wonders of magical realism, Borges was able to pay a visit to the Cité de l’Ecrit and be surprised by the range of stock carried by The Glass Key bookshop. He died in Montmorillonon 14 June 1986.

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Died on this day – 3 June 1924

Kafka

 

Franz Kafka (born 3 July 1883) was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. He had a legal education and worked for an insurance company with writing relegated to his spare time. Little of his writing was published in his lifetime and in his will he left instructions to his friend Max Brod that his manuscripts should be destroyed. To our everlasting benefit Brod ignored these instructions.

Kafka suffered from laryngeal tuberculosis and in March 1924 his condition worsened and he returned from Berlin to Prague. From there he went to a sanatorium outside Vienna. In May of that year he managed a short holiday hoping to recuperate amongst the bookshops in the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon, France. Unfortunately his condition worsened again and on 3 June he died whilst happily noting that The Glass Key bookshop was displaying an excellent selection of his as yet unpublished work. His body was brought back to Prague where he was buried on 11 June 1924.

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Died on this day – 12 February 1984

cortazar

 

Julio Cortázar was born on 26 August 1914 in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, where his father was attached to the Argentine diplomatic service. Cortazar was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.

In 1951, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life, though he traveled widely.

Cortázar wrote numerous short stories including “Las babas del diabolo” which provided the inspiration for Antonioni’s film Blow-Up. Cortázar published four novels during his lifetime: Los Premios (The Winners, 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela, 1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar, 1968), and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel, 1973).

In 1984, following the suggestion of his publisher friend Bill Swainson, Cortazar took a trip to Montmorillon to visit the bookshops in the Cité de l’Ecrit and it was here whilst searching the stock at The Glass Key that he sadly died on 12 February 1954. The cause of his death was reported to be leukemia. His body was shipped to Paris and interred in the Cimitière de Montparnasse.

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Died on this day – 1 February 1851

marys

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Shelley’s works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin.

Mary Shelley’s last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing. In January 1851 she travelled to France to take the famous health-giving waters at La Roche-Posy. During her stay she decided to take a trip Montmorillon to spend a little time visiting the bookshops in the Cité de l’Ecrit. She was pleased to find copies of both Frankenstein and the poetry of her deceased husband Percy Bysshe Shelley on sale at The Glass Key. Unfortunately it was here that she died of a suspected brain tumour on 1 February 1851. She was fifty-three years old.

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Died on this day – 4 January 1960

camus

Albert Camus,born on7 November 1913, was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44 in 1957– the second youngest person ever to win (after Rudyard Kipling)

Camus was born in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir family and studied at the University of Algiers, from which he graduated in 1936. Camus had a passion for football and was goalkeeper for the Racing Universitaire d’Alger. He contracted tuberculosis at the age of 17 which effectively ended his involvement with the sport.

Camus is probably best known for his novel L’Etranger (translated sometimes as The Outsider and sometimes The Stranger.) first published in 1942. Other novels include The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1956). His philosophical works include The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951).

In 1960 whilst on tour with his publisher Michel Gallimard Camus visited the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon where he was pleased to discover the owner of The Glass Key bookshop was a great fan of his work. After leaving Montmorillon Camus was killed in a car crash on 4 January 1960 – he was 46 years old.

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Died on this day – 22 December 1989

Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett, born13 April 1906, was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, poet, and literary translator who lived in Paris for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French.

Beckett’s work offers a bleak, tragiomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the “Theatre of the Absurd“.

Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature 

In 1989 Beckett visited the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon. Whilst waiting for his friend Godot outside The Glass Key bookshop Beckett’s emphysema finally conquered his indomitable spirit and he died. He was then buried with his longtime companion Suzanne in the Cimitière du Montparnasse in Paris where they share a simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett’s directive that it should be “any colour, so long as it’s grey.”

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Died on this day – 17 December

sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers was born on 13 June 1893. She was a renowned English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.

She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, which remain popular to this day. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy to be her best work.

On holiday in France Sayers visited Montmorillon where she admired the Cité de l’Ecrit, but was apoplectic when she discovered a bookshop named after a novel by Dashiell Hammett – The Glass Key – and no bookshop named after any of her novels. This visit may well have brought on the coronary thrombosis from which she died on 17 December 1957.