A Natural History of Dragons

LitStack Review: Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan

Within the Sanctuary of Wings A Memoir by Lady Trent Marie Brennan Tor Books Release Date: April 25, 2017 ISBN 978-0-7653-7765-4 What a lovely way to end a wonderful fantasy series! Since 2013, with the publication of Lady Trent’s first installment of her memoirs in A Natural History of Dragons, […]

LitStack Review: Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan

Voyage of the Basilisk – A Memoir by Lady Trent Marie Brennan Tor Books Release Date: March 31, 2015 ISBN 978-0-7653-3198-4 I want to be Lady Trent when I grow up. Okay, so I’m way past the age where I could look forward to being “grown up”, but I still […]

Birthdays

On this day, August 5, in 1850, Guy de Maupassant was born in Tourville-sur-Arques, France. Considered one of the fathers of the modern short story, he was mentored by Gustave Flaubert and taken under the wing of Alexandre Dumas, fils. Author of over 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of poetry, his very first work, Boule de Suif was immensely – and immediately – popular, and is considered a masterpiece. Despite his public and critical success, he craved solitude and suffered from hallucinations, eventually attempting suicide at age 42. He died less than two years later after being committed to a private mental asylum in Paris.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.