Thomas Wolfe

popular name: Franz Kafka

date_of_death: June 3, 1924

age: 40

cause_of_death: Laryngeal tuberculosis and starvation

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian writer born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now the Czech Republic). He is widely regarded as one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. Kafka was born into a middle-class Jewish family and had a complicated relationship with his domineering father, which deeply influenced his writing. He studied law at the University of Prague and worked for much of his life in insurance, writing in his spare time. Kafka’s works often explore themes of alienation, absurdity, and the oppressive power of bureaucracy, with his most famous stories including The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. His distinctive style blends realism with surreal, nightmarish scenarios, reflecting a sense of existential dread. Despite writing prolifically, Kafka published only a few works during his lifetime and instructed his friend Max Brod to destroy his manuscripts after his death. Brod ignored these wishes and instead edited and published much of Kafka’s work, securing his posthumous reputation. Upon his passing, the grave of Franz Kafka can be found at New Jewish Cemetery in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

popular name: Wallace Stevens

date_of_death: August 2, 1955

age: 75

cause_of_death: Stomach cancer

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955. Stevens's best-known poems include "The Auroras of Autumn", "Anecdote of the Jar", "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Sunday Morning", "The Snow Man", and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Though now considered one of the major American poets of the twentieth century, Stevens did not receive widespread recognition until the publication of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Knopf, 1954), just a year before his death. His other major works include The Necessary Angel (Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), a collection of essays on poetry; Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (The Cummington Press, 1942); The Man With the Blue Guitar (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937); and Ideas of Order (The Alcestis Press, 1935). His published book The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954) earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

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.