Classics Calendar for August 17

Brad Bird's popular 1999 animated film The Iron
Giant is based on the Ted Hughes children's book
The Iron Man (U.S. title The Iron Giant)

Here are today's milestones:

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Born on this day:

Ted Hughes (1930; died October 28, 1998) English poet and children's writer who wrote poems The Hawk in the Rain; Crow; Birthday Letters; prose Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being; for children The Iron Man (The Iron Giant); Poet Laureate of the UK (1984-1998)

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V. S. Naipaul (1932; died August 11, 2018) Trinidadian British novelist and essayist; A House for Mr Biswas; In a Free State; A Bend in the River; The Enigma of Arrival; Nobel Prize in Literature (2001)

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Died on this day:

Frank Kermode (2010; born November 29, 1919) British literary critic who wrote The Sense of an Ending

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