Ellen Glasgow

popular name: E. E. Cummings

date_of_death: September 3, 1962

age: 67

cause_of_death: Stroke

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Now remembered largely for his funky punctuation, E. E. Cummings was for decades one of America’s most celebrated, controversial, and popular poets—the dashing, impecunious prince of Greenwich Village. An American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright, he wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. He is often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century.

popular name: Jack Kerouac

date_of_death: October 21, 1969

age: 47

cause_of_death: Abdominal hemorrhage and cirrhosis of the liver due to chronic alcoholism

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist who, alongside Jack Cassidey, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation in the late 1950s through the early 60s. After the publication of On The Road and The Dharma Bums Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement. At the time Kerouac greatly influenced many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, and the Doors.

popular name: Albert Camus

date_of_death: January 4, 1960

age: 46

cause_of_death: Automobile accident

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. Some of his best known works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.The dominant philosophical contribution of Camus’s work is absurdism. While he is often associated with existentialism, he rejected the label, expressing surprise that he would be viewed as a philosophical ally of Sartre. Elements of absurdism and existentialism are present in Camus’s most celebrated writing especially in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). The protagonists of The Stranger and The Plague must also confront the absurdity of social and cultural orthodoxies, with dire results. Camus died on January 4, 1960 at the age of 46, in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin. He had spent the New Year's holiday of 1960 at his house in Lourmarin, Vaucluse with his family, and his publisher Michel Gallimard, along with Gallimard's wife, Janine, and daughter. Camus's wife and children went back to Paris by train but Camus decided to return in Gallimard's luxurious Facel Vega FV2. The car crashed into a plane tree on a long straight stretch of the Route nationale 5. Camus, who was in the passenger seat, died instantly. Gallimard died a few days later, although his wife and daughter were unharmed.