Edith Anisfield Wolf

popular name: William Shakespeare

date_of_death: April 23, 1616

age: 52

cause_of_death: Exact cause unknown - possibly died after a brief illness

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.

popular name: Harold Robbins

date_of_death: October 14, 1997

age: 81

cause_of_death: Respiratory heart failure

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Harold Robbins, a writer whose formula of sex, money and power made him one of the best-selling authors of his day, wrote over 25 best-sellers, selling over 750 million copies in 32 languages. Among his best-known books is The Carpetbaggers (1961) – featuring a protagonist who was a loose composite of Howard Hughes, Bill Lear, Harry Cohn, and Louis B. Mayer. The Carpetbaggers takes the reader from New York to California, from the prosperity of the aeronautical industry to the glamor of Hollywood. Its sequel, The Raiders, was released in 1995. He spent a great deal of time on the French Riviera and at Monte Carlo until his death from respiratory heart failure, at the age of 81 in Palm Springs, California. His cremated remains are interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cathedral City. Robbins has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6743 Hollywood Boulevard.

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.