Literary Chronology

43BC:

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) is born on March 20 in Sulmo, Italy.

8AD:

Ovid's Metamorphoses is published.

17AD:

Ovid dies in exile in Tomi on the Black Sea.

1564:

Christopher Marlowe is born on February 6 just a few months before Shakespeare is born.

1593:

Christopher Marlowe dies in a brawl, supposedly over an unpaid dinner bill, on May 30 in Deptford, England. Marlowe's death, from a stab wound to his forehead, remains controversial, since some scholars argue that his death was not really the result of a dispute but was more likely an assassination.

1599:

Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is published posthumously.

1819:

Walt Whitman is born on Long Island, New York.

1865:

Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" is published.

1865:

Rudyard Kipling is born on December 30 in Bombay, India.

1892:

Walt Whitman dies of tuberculosis.

1896:

Eugenio Montale is born on October 12 in Genoa, Italy.

1907:

Rudyard Kipling receives the Nobel Prize in Literature "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."

1910:

Rudyard Kipling's "If" is published.

1924:

Zbigniew Herbert is born on October 29 in Lwów (or Lvov), a city that is located in Eastern Poland and that later becomes a part of the Ukraine.

1925:

Eugenio Montale's "On the Threshold" is published.

1936:

Rudyard Kipling dies on January 18 in London, following an intestinal hemorrhage.

1936:

Marge Piercy is born on March 31 in Detroit, Michigan.

1944:

Eavan Boland is born on September 24 in Dublin, Ireland.

1949:

Radmila Lazić is born in the central Serbian city of Krusevac, which is on the Morava tributary of the Danube River, at a time when it is part of Yugoslavia.

1950:

Edward Hirsch is born on January 20 in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

1951:

Paul Muldoon is born on June 20 in Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

1951:

Brigit Pegeen Kelly is born in Palo Alto, California.

1952:

Susan Stewart is born on March 15 in York, Pennsylvania.

1953:

Sharon Hashimoto is born on October 23 in Seattle, Washington.

1954:

Mary Jo Salter is born on August 15 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

1962:

Elizabeth Alexander is born on May 30 in New York City and grows up in Washington, D.C.

1968:

Zbigniew Herbert's "Why The Classics" is published.

1975:

Eugenio Montale receives the Nobel Prize in Literature for "for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions."

1981:

Eugenio Montale dies of heart failure in Milan on September 12.

1982:

Eavan Boland's "It's a Woman's World" is published.

1985:

Edward Hirsch's "Omen" is published.

1995:

Susan Stewart's "The Forest" is published.

1998:

Marge Piercy's "Apple sauce for Eve" is published.

1998:

Zbigniew Herbert dies on July 28 in Warsaw, Poland.

2001:

Elizabeth Alexander's "The Toni Morrison Dreams" is published.

2002:

Paul Muldoon's "Pineapples and Pomegranates" is published.

2003:

Radmila Lazić's "Death Sentences" is published.

2003:

Mary Jo Salter's "Trompe l'Oeil" is published.

2003:

Sharon Hashimoto's "What I Would Ask My Husband's Dead Father" is published.

2003:

Paul Muldoon receives the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel.

2004:

Brigit Pegeen Kelly's "The Satyr's Heart" is published.