Word: novelists
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Janet Fairbank, 44, concert soprano, venturesome talent-hunter, daughter of Novelist Janet Ayer Fairbank (The Bright Land), niece of Pulitzer Novelist Margaret Ayer Barnes (Years of Grace); of malignant leukemia; in Chicago. Her practice of singing new songs instead of sure-fire classics consistently lost her money, won her the gratitude of young U.S. composers...
Conrad was a rarely skilled practitioner of that art, and is one of its heroes. A Pole by birth, a merchant seaman and ship's officer for 20 years, a student of letters whose first acquired language was French, Conrad became an English novelist only through creative sufferings of which it is painful to read; Editor Zabel calls his exercise of will power "appalling." Henry James found Conrad "absolutely alone as a votary of the way to do a thing that shall make it undergo most doing...
Died. Katharine Smith Dos Passos, 51, wife of Novelist John Dos Passos and an author in her own right (The Private Adventure of Captain Shaw, in collaboration with Edith Shay) in an auto accident which cost her husband his right eye in Wareham, Mass...
...Edinburgh lawyer, William Roughead, whom many connoisseurs consider the dean of crime writers. Neither police nor detectives in the modern sense existed in the 18th Century. Parish constables were amateurs serving a term, and parish watchmen were aged criers, of small use in chasing or collaring villains. Novelist Henry Fielding, while a magistrate, founded London's "Bow Street runners" to pursue criminals- the catch being that the criminal had to be reported before he got out of sight. The professional "thief taker" was not a public official but a shady individual who made a business of collecting rewards...
...Peacock). Cries of "Fire!" A tall, handsome, irascible old man hurries in, followed by a curate who implores him to leave. "By the immortal gods," shouts the old man, looking at his beloved books, "I will not move." Several weeks later, he died of shock. Death had paid Novelist Thomas Love Peacock the compliment of imitating his style...