Ellen Glasgow

popular name: Sylvia Beach

date_of_death: October 5, 1962

age: 75

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: In the 1920s and 1930s, Sylvia Beach owned and ran Shakespeare and Company, a Paris bookshop. The shop became the community center for "lost generation" intellectuals from Britain and America, including James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Stephen Spender, Djuna Barnes, Kay Boyle, Natalie Barney, Mina Loy, Margaret Anderson , and Gertrude Stein , as well as for prominent French writers like Paul Valéry, André Gide, and Paul Claudel. In 1959, Beach published her memoirs, Shakespeare and Company, a lively conversational account of the shop during the interwar years. She had a large collection of James Joyce's first editions, manuscripts and memorabilia, and as Joyce's reputation continued to grow—though he had died in 1940—Beach was approached by dozens of Joyce scholars for access to her collection.

popular name: Dashiell Hammett

date_of_death: January 10, 1961

age: 66

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: The name Dashiell Hammett is synonymous with the "hard-boiled" genre of detective fiction. Born Samuel Dashiell Hammett, he worked as a detective in his early twenties and later wrote numerous popular mystery novels, most famously "The Maltese Falcon" (1930) and "The Thin Man" (1931). Hammett enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps, but spent most of World War I hospitalized for influenza and tuberculosis. Hammett enlisted again after Pearl Harbor, at the age of 48, and was stationed at a base in the Aleutian Islands. A vocal supporter of civil liberties and left-leaning causes, Hammett was blacklisted as a suspected communist during the early Cold War, and he served six months in jail for refusing to divulge the names of those who helped fund an activist group that he led.

popular name: Jules Verne

date_of_death: March 24, 1905

age: 77

cause_of_death: Chronic diabetes and complications from a stroke

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Jules Verne was a French novelist, poet and playwright best known for his adventure novels and is often regarded as one of the pioneers of science fiction. Born in Nantes, France, Verne initially studied law but eventually turned to writing. He was heavily inspired by the technological advancements of his time and often incorporated them into his stories. Verne's most famous works include Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, and The Mysterious Island. These novels blended adventure with futuristic scientific concepts and often predicted inventions like submarines and space travel. Despite some initial financial struggles, Verne gained fame and success after his works began to be published in serialized form. His imaginative stories captured the public's imagination, and he became one of the most translated authors of his time. Verne's later life was marked by personal tragedy, including a serious injury that left him partly disabled nonetheless he continued writing until his death in 1905.