Classics Calendar for March 19

Brenda Patimkin (Ali MacGraw) on a poster
for the 1969 film adaptation of Philip
Roth's
novella Goodbye, Columbus

Here are today's milestones:



Born on this day:

Tobias Smollett (1771; died September 17, 1771) Scottish novelist and poet known for Roderick Random; Peregrine Pickle; Sir Launcelot Greaves



Richard Francis Burton (1821; died October 20, 1890) British explorer and writer who made translations of One Thousand and One Nights and The Kama Sutra; wrote the Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah and the pseudotranslation The Kasidah



Philip Roth (1933; died May 22, 2018) American novelist; Goodbye, Columbus; Portnoy's Complaint; American Pastoral; Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1998)



Died on this day:

Ibn Khaldun (1406; born May 27, 1332) North African Muslim historian; Muqaddimah (part I of a history of the world, Kitāb al-'Ibar)



Elias Lonnrot (1884; born April 9, 1802) Finnish folklorist who compiled Kalevala, the national epic of Finland, from national folk tales he had gathered; and Kanteletar, a collection of Finnish folk poetry



Edgar Rice Burroughs (1950; born September 1, 1875) American pulp writer; writing "pulp fiction," most famously Tarzan, John Carter, Pellucidar, and other series



Arthur C. Clarke (2008; born December 16, 1917) British author of science fiction; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Profiles of the Future; Rendezvous with Rama; The Fountains of Paradise



Bonus Classic:

Theocritus (flourished c. 270) Greek poet known for Idylls



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