Ellen Glasgow

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: Victor Hugo

date_of_death: May 22, 1885

age: 83

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Victor Hugo is considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. Outside France, his most famous works are the novels Les Misérables (1862), and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). In France, Hugo is renowned for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations (The Contemplations) and La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages). Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani. He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.

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.