Ellen Glasgow

popular name: Molière

date_of_death: February 17, 1673

age: 51

cause_of_death: Pulmonary tuberculosis

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Molière was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the great writers in the French language and world literature. His extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets, and more. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed at the Comédie-Française more often than those of any other playwright today. His influence is such that the French language is often referred to as the "language of Molière".

popular name: C. S. Forester

date_of_death: April 2, 1966

age: 66

cause_of_death: Decline from heart attack and stroke

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: C.S. Forester is best known for his Horatio Hornblower series, 12 novels set during the Napoleonic Wars that track the adventures and the growth of a young Englishman in the Royal Navy. By 1937, he was well on the way to success with the publication of his first novel in the series. Another of his best-known works, The African Queen, was one of the many of his works that inspired screenplays—for both movies on the big screen and for television—that included some based on the Hornblower novels. Forester also wrote plays and children’s books, and, early in his career, he made contributions to the emerging genre of crime fiction. His masterpiece of suspense, Payment Deferred, foreshadowed the works of later practitioners of mystery fiction. Five biographies, some histories, and an early autobiography were also part of his varied output.

popular name: Jean-Paul Sartre

date_of_death: April 15, 1980

age: 74

cause_of_death: Pulmonary edema

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, sexual predator and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it. Major philosophical works include Being and Nothingness (1943) where he explored human consciousness, freedom, and "bad faith" and Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), a public lecture defending existentialism. Sartre's best known literary works include Nausea (1938), a novel expressing existential dread and No Exit (1944), famous for the line "Hell is other people." Upon his passing the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre at Cimetière du Montparnasse is a top tourist attraction. His legacy ... not so much.