On this day
February 1 in literary history
Literary history for February 1: 16 writers born, 10 writers who died and 3 literary events from 1459 to 2014. Born on this day: Meg Cabot, Terry Jones, Fritjof Capra.
Writers born on February 1
| Born | Writer | Known as |
|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Meg Cabot | American novelist |
| 1942 | Terry Jones | Welsh actor, comedian, director, historian and writer (1942–2020) |
| 1939 | Fritjof Capra | American physicist and author (born 1939) |
| 1927 | Galway Kinnell | American poet (1927–2014) |
| 1918 | Muriel Spark | Scottish author (1918–2006) |
| 1917 | José Luis Sampedro | Spanish economist and writer (1917–2013) |
| 1907 | Günter Eich | German lyricist, dramatist and author |
| 1904 | S. J. Perelman | American screenwriter (1904–1979) |
| 1902 | Langston Hughes | American writer and social activist (1901–1967) |
| 1897 | Denise Robins | English novelist (1897–1985) |
| 1887 | Charles Nordhoff | American novelist (1887–1947) |
| 1884 | Yevgeny Zamyatin | Russian author (1884–1937) |
| 1874 | Hugo von Hofmannsthal | Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist (1874–1929) |
| 1796 | Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich | Swiss poet (1796–1865) |
| 1648 | Elkanah Settle | English poet and playwright (1648–1724) |
| 1459 | Conrad Celtes | German Renaissance humanist scholar and poet (1459–1508) |
Writers who died on February 1
| Died | Writer | Known as |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Rene Ricard | American poet (1946–2014) |
| 2012 | Wisława Szymborska | Polish poet and Nobel laureate (1923–2012) |
| 2007 | Gian Carlo Menotti | Italian-American composer and librettist (1911–2007) |
| 2004 | Suha Arın | Turkish film director, writer, producer and educator |
| 1992 | Jean Hamburger | French physician, surgeon and essayist |
| 1991 | Ahmad Abd al-Ghafur Attar | Saudi Arabian writer and journalist (1916–1991) |
| 1940 | Philip Francis Nowlan | American novelist (1888–1940) |
| 1940 | Zacharias Papantoniou | Greek writer |
| 1851 | Mary Shelley | English writer (1797–1851) |
| 1734 | John Floyer (physician) | English physician and author (1649–1734) |
Literary events on February 1
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1942 | Mao Zedong makes a speech on "Reform in Learning, the Party and Literature", which puts into motion the Yan'an Rectification Movement. |
| 1884 | The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary is published. |
| 1884 | The first fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary, a 352-page volume that covered words from A to ant, was published. |
Featured
Meg Cabot (1967) — Meggin Patricia Cabot is an American novelist. She has written and published over 80 novels of young adult and adult fiction and is best known for her young adult series The Princess Diaries, which was later adapted by Walt Disney Pictures into two feature films.
Terry Jones (1942) — Terence Graham Parry Jones was a Welsh actor, comedian, director, historian, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
Fritjof Capra (1939) — Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born American author, physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He was on the faculty of Schumacher College, which was disestablished in 2024.
Sources & data
- Compiled from Wikipedia’s “On this day” selections (CC BY-SA 4.0), filtered for writers and literary events.