Sully Prudhomme, Julien Green, Madeleine L'Engle, Jennifer Egan, and Felix Salten are the acclaimed authors who were born or died on a day like this.

Sully Prudhomme
René François Armand (Sully) Prudhomme was a French poet and essayist. He was born on March 1839 and passed away on a day like this in 1907. Born in Paris, Prudhomme originally studied to be an engineer, but turned to philosophy and later to poetry; he declared it as his intent to create scientific poetry for modern times. In character sincere and melancholic, he was linked to the Parnassus school, although, at the same time, his work displays characteristics of its own. His first collection, "Stanzas and Poems" (1865), was praised by Sainte-Beuve. It included his most famous poem, "Le vase brisé". He published more poetry before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. This war, which he discussed in Impressions "de la guerre" (1872) and "La France" (1874), permanently damaged his health. During his career, Prudhomme gradually shifted from the sentimental style of his first books towards a more personal style which unified the formality of the Parnassian school with his interest in philosophical and scientific subjects. He published two important essays: "L'Expression dans les beaux-arts" (1884) and "Réflexions sur l'art des vers" (1892), a series of articles on Blaise Pascal in "La Revue des Deux Mondes" (1890), and an article on free will (La Psychologie du Libre-Arbitre, 1906) in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale. The first writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, he devoted the bulk of the money he received to the creation of a poetry prize awarded by the Société des gens de lettres. He also founded, in 1902, the Société des poètes français with Jose-Maria de Heredia and Leon Dierx.

Julien Green
Julien Green was born on a day like this in 1900 to American parents in Paris. He was an American writer. He wrote primarily in French and was the first non-French national to be elected to the Académie française. Most of Green's books focused on the ideas of faith and religion as well as hypocrisy. Several dealt with the southern United States, and he strongly identified with the fate of the Confederacy, characterizing himself throughout his life as a "Sudiste". He inherited this version of patriotism from his mother, who came from a distinguished southern family. He authored several novels, including "Léviathan" and "Each in His Own Darkness". n France, both during his life and today, Green's fame rests principally not on his novels, but on his journals, published in ten volumes, and spanning the years 1926-1976. Green died on August 1998, aged 97.

Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer. She was born in New York City on November 1918. L'Engle wrote her first story at age five and began keeping a journal at age eight. These early literary attempts did not translate into academic success at the New York City private school where she was enrolled. She wrote her novel, "A Wrinkle in Time" in 1960. More than two dozen publishers rejected the story before Farrar, Straus and Giroux finally published it in 1962. She won the Newbery Medal for this book and it became her best known work. She is also known for its sequels: "A Wind in the Door", National Book Award-winning "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", "Many Waters", and "An Acceptable Time". Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science. L'Engle passed away on a day like this in 2007, at the age of 88. 

Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan, born on a day like this in 1962, is an American novelist and short story writer who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Egan was born in Chicago, but grew up in San Francisco. She has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares, among other periodicals, and her journalism appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She has published one short story collection and four novels, among which "Look at Me" was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. Egan's novel "A Visit From the Goon Squad" won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

Felix Salten
Felix Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann on a day like this in 1869 in Budapest, Hungary. He was an Austrian author and critic in Vienna. In 1900 he published his first collection of short stories. In 1901 he initiated Vienna's first, short-lived literary cabaret. He was soon publishing, on an average, one book a year, of plays, short stories, novels, travel books, and essay collections. He also wrote for nearly all the major newspapers of Vienna. His most famous work is "Bambi" (1923). It was translated into English in 1928 and became a Book-of-the-Month Club success. In 1933, he sold the film rights to director Sidney Franklin for only $1,000, and Franklin later transferred the rights to the Walt Disney studios. Walt Disney released its movie based on Bambi in 1942. Also stories "Perri" and "The Hound of Florence" inspired the Disney films Perri (1957) and The Shaggy Dog (1959). Salten passed away on October 1945, aged 76.

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