Dead man books

It just struck me, as I was about to try and superficially connect to some authors who I admire, on Twitter – they’re all dead! The good ones anyway, the classics. I didn’t think ‘classic’ also precluded ‘dead’. Some of the following are not surprisingly long dead. But it’s still striking. Perhaps death brings some sort of added meaning to the words they wrote. Or maybe they were just bloody good at their craft.

Writer and year of death:

• George Orwell – 1950
• Richard Feynman – 1988
• Roald Dahl – 1990
• Mark Twain – 1910
• Kurt Vonnegut – 2007
• Ryunosuke Akutagawa – 1927
• Rudyard Kipling – 1936
• John Steinbeck – 1968
• Aldous Huxley – 1963
• C.S. Lewis – 1963
• Lewis Carroll – 1898
• Dick King Smith – 2011
• Enid Blyton – 1968
• J. D. Salinger – 2010
• Arthur Conan Doyle – 1930
• H.P. Lovecraft – 1937
• John Buchan – 1940
• F. Scott Fitzgerald – 1940

By no means an exhaustive list, simply some of the authors who have shaped my reading and writing preferences. Every one dead but not gone. Writing has a great way of outliving any life. That reminds, me I have a book to write…