Like last year, I'll highlight a few of the notable anniversaries coming up in 2011:
50 years ago (1961):
- Jasper Fforde born, 11 January.
- Dashiell Hammett dies, 10 January.
- Ernest Hemingway dies, 2 July.
- James Thurber dies, 2 November.- Sheila Burnford's The Incredible Journey published.
- Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach published.
- Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land published.
- Joseph Heller's Catch-22 published.
- Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins wins the Newbery Medal.
- Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
100 years ago (1911):
- Elizabeth Bishop born, 8 February.
- L. Ron Hubbard born, 13 March.
- Tennessee Williams born, 26 March.
- Mervyn Peake born, 9 July.
- Marshall McLuhan born, 21 July.
- William Golding born, 19 September.
- Naguib Mahfouz born, 11 December.
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson dies, 9 May.
- Howard Pyle dies, 9 November.
- Eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica published.
- Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden published.
- Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome published.
- Count Maeterlinck wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
150 years ago (1861):
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning dies, 29 June.
- Charles Dickens' Great Expectations published.
- George Eliot's Silas Marner published.
200 years ago (1811):
- Arthur Hallam born, 1 February.
- Horace Greeley born, 3 February.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe born, 14 June.
- William Makepeace Thackeray born, 18 July.
- Théophile Gautier born, 31 August.- Heinrich von Kleist dies, 21 November.
- Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility published.
300 years ago (1711):
- David Hume born, 26 April.
- Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism published.
- Shaftesbury's Characteristicks published.
- The Spectator founded.
350 years ago (1661):
- Charles Rollin born, 30 January.
- Paul de Rapin born, 25 March.
- Robert Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist published.
400 years ago (1611):
- King James Bible published, 2 May.
- Shakespeare's The Tempest first performed, 1 November.
450 years ago (1561):
- Sir Francis Bacon born, 22 January.
- John Harington born, 4 August.
- Conrad Lycosthenes dies.
- Claude Garamond dies.
500 years ago (1511):
- Erasmus' Moriae encomium seu laus stultitiae (The Praise of Folly) printed.
550 years ago (1461):
- Zanobi Acciaoli (librarian of the Vatican) born, 25 May.
