After his death in April 2014, the President of Colombia called this author “the greatest Colombian that ever lived.” Let’s find out why!
Author Gabriel García Márquez was born on March 6th, 1927 in the small Colombian town of Aracataca. His father, a pharmacist, and his mother left him to be raised by his maternal grandparents, before coming back to Aracataca for Gabriel and his brother when he was almost 10 years old. His maternal grandparents, his grandfather in terms of his liberal political beliefs and his grandmother’s belief in the supernatural, were very influential in Márquez’s upbringing, and so was, surprisingly, his parents romance before marriage. His father was not the ideal choice in his mother’s list of suitors, and yet he spent quite a bit of energy romancing her (window violinists, love letters, the whole nine yards) and eventually won both her and her family over. This story Gabriel would eventually, much later, adopt for his novel Love in the Time of Cholera.
But, I get ahead of myself. First things first! After being reconciled with his parents at age 10 and moving to Sucre, Márquez became a shy and serious teenager, often found writing humorous poetry, to the delight of his family and friends! Though he was not very athletic as a child, after attending high school at Colegio jesuita San José he was awarded a scholarship to study in Bogotá. After graduating in 1947, Márquez stayed living in Bogotá to study law.
However, Márquez’s passion lay in writing, despite continuing his law studies in order to please his father. That did not stop him from publishing his work, however. Having published poems throughout high school in his school journals and papers, La tercera resignación was his first published work as an adult, which appeared in the 13th of September, 1947 edition of the newspaper El Espectador. Coincidentally and luckily for Márquez,the assassination of Gaitán, in 1948 led his school to be closed indefinitely. Márquez began working as a reporter at El Universal and eventually moved on to write for El Heraldo.
Márquez’s literary skills were honed in the 1950s, when he became part of a group of journalists and authors known as the Barranquilla Group – the Bloomsbury group of Bogotá, if you will. He became enthralled by the works of contemporary authors like Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner – and authors who mixed the every day with the extraordinary, like Franz Kafka. Throughout this time, Márquez continued working as a journalist, honing his literary skills.
In 1955, Márquez’s first novella Leaf Storm, was published after seven years of trying to find a publisher – somewhat shocking, considering the group he was a part of in Barranquilla. Later on, Márquez would remember Leaf Storm as his favorite of his works – insisting that it was his most spontaneous and most sincere work. It follows both a child and woman’s point of view of death in stream of consciousness style.
In 1967 Márquez finished 18 months of daily writing to publish his most critically successful work, and the one he would win the Nobel Prize for years later – One Hundred Years of Solitude. After achieving international fame for said work, Márquez spent the following years traveling the globe with his family, acting as a negotiation liaison for several political situations, and writing other works such as Autumn of the Patriarch, The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (see our holding, a 1st Italian edition, here) and Love in the Time of Cholera. All of his works held a kind of “magical realism” – origins that one can trace back to his upbringing with his realistic grandfather and supernatural-believing grandmother.
By 2005, Márquez was publishing significantly less, though still admitting to writing all the time. After suffering from lymphatic cancer (but going into remission), a few years later it was announced that he was suffering from dementia. In April 2014 he passed away from pneumonia in Mexico City – and his loss was felt by the entire world.
After a few adventures with his cousin, Drake spent much of the early 1570s living along the “Spanish Main” or the Panama Isthmus, attacking Spanish vessels and small settlements. During this time, fun fact, Drake climbed a tree on the Isthmus of Panama and looked out over the Pacific – being the first Englishman to ever behold the Pacific Ocean. Drake and his men eventually made it back to Plymouth, England, having captured much in Peruvian gold but having been forced to bury it along the way to avoid its recapture by the Spanish.
In 1577, Elizabeth I sent Drake (because of his “success” with the Isthmus raids) on an expedition to sail along the Pacific coast of the Americas. After one false start due to bad weather, the crew set final sail on the 13th of December, 1577. Drake set out with five ships (which soon became 6) and 164 men. The crew made it around Cape Horn, and went alongside the coast of South America pillaging and looting Spanish towns and ships along the way. Drake restocked and rested his ships on the Coast of California for a time, and then continued on to the Molucca islands in what is now known as Indonesia. Eventually Drake rounded the Cape of Good Hope – the southernmost tip in Africa, and made his way back to Plymouth, having circumnavigated the globe and made it around two of the most treacherous sailing spots in the world (both Capes) in just under three years.
Crane was born on November 1st, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, the 14th child (of only 8 surviving children) to a clergyman and daughter of a clergyman. Crane began writing at an early age, and when he was eight years old he wrote his first surviving poem – “I’d Rather Have A-” – a poem about wanting a dog for Christmas! One year later he began formal schooling and completed two grades within a six week period. Throughout Crane’s education he was a slightly erratic student, if intelligent and somewhat popular. This could be put down to the fact that by the time Crane was a teen, quite a few members of his family (his father and siblings) were dead – leading to a very different childhood than his classmates.
In 1893 Crane became frustrated with stories written about the Civil War, stating “I wonder that some of those fellows don’t tell how they felt in those scraps. They spout enough of what they did, but they’re as emotionless as rocks.” Crane decided to write an account of a soldier in the war, and began work on what would become The Red Badge of Courage, Crane’s most beloved work to date. His story would be different from his contemporaries – for he wanted desperately to present a “psychological portrayal of fear” by describing a young man disillusioned by the harsh truths of war. He succeeded and a year later his novel began to be published in serial form by the Bacheller-Johnson Newspaper Syndicate. It was heavily edited for publication in the serial, though it did begin to cause a stir in its readers. Crane then worked on a book of poetry, which was published to large amounts of criticism due to his use of free verse, not then a common convention. Crane was not bothered by its unpopular reception – he was instead quite pleased that the book made “some stir” and caused a reaction of any sort. In 1895 Appleton published The Red Badge of Courage, the full chapters, in book form – and Crane became a household name overnight. The book was in the “top six on various bestseller lists around the country” for months after its publication. It even became popular abroad and was widely read in Great Britain as well. Crane was only 23 years old at the start of his fame.
Crane became a war correspondent alongside Taylor in the Greek-Turkish War of 1897, and then the Spanish-American War in 1898.
King then had his novel The Shining published in 1977, and The Stand in 1978. In the late 1970s King began a series, eventually known as The Dark Tower, a series which would span the next four decades of King’s life finally ending in 2004. In 1980 King’s novel Firestarter was published, and in 1983 his novel Christine was published – both by the large and well-known publisher Viking. He tried his hand at working on comic books, writing a bit for the X-men series Heroes for Hope in 1985. King published under several pseudonyms for various reasons (now keep a lookout for these names, you hear?) including Richard Bachman (after Bachman-Turner Overdrive), John Swithen (a character out of Carrie) and Beryl Evans (which King used to publish the book Charlie the Choo-Choo: From the World of the Dark Tower). Though he has written many, many works over the years (54 novels, 6 non-fiction books and 200 short stories, to put it bluntly), some of the more popular stories whose names you might recognize (due to their being transferred to the big screen or otherwise) are Children of the Corn (1977), Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redepmtion (1982), Misery (1987), The Man in the Black Suit (1994), The Green Mile (1996), Bag of Bones (1998), and his memoir On Writing (2000). And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the volume of work King has produced over the past many decades.
Yours truly, along with 14 other BCC members, on our 
After giving us an overview of the collection, and its history, we eventually found our way to Special Collections, where Axel tantalized us with one interesting & fascinating item after another… here I wish I’d taken notes, for memory fails me as to most specifics, other than the 1287 deed for a vineyard land transfer & a cute little accordion miniature that on first blush appears to be a wine cork. That said, my fellow attendee, Anne Smith, did, however, take notes, so see her soon-to-be-published BCC piece for more specifics on the books Axel had at show-n-tell.
Next on the agenda was a buffet lunch, which, given we were a willing captive audience, included a presentation on projects UC Davis has in the works… one is a interactive social map showing wine-related connections. Intriguing, to say the least. Another is the digitization & searchable compilation of wine price lists, et al. For food & drink historians, invaluable.
Ernest was born in February 1874 in County Kildare, Ireland – the first of two boys out of ten children in an Anglo-Irish family… and the son of a dreamer. When Ernest was six his father gave up his career as a landowner and decided to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor. He moved the family to Dublin in order to begin his studies at Trinity College. Once acquiring his degree, Henry Shackleton then moved his family to London when Ernest was 10. Shackleton was an avid reader, but a maddening student. He did not take to lessons so well, despite being able to finish at the top of his class several years, and was finally allowed to leave school at 16 to pursue the adventures he had dreamed of for years while reading travel books and thrilling adventure accounts. His father got him an apprenticeship on a sailing vessel, and the young Shackleton spent the next 8 years studying for different mariner tests, Second Mate, then First Mate, and ultimately Master Mariner (captain).
The Endurance began it’s slow and hard journey through the Weddell Sea in early December, by mid-January becoming frozen in first year ice. Shackleton realized at the end of February that the boat would be stuck until the following spring (that October or thereabouts, as the seasons are backwards), as there was no hope for the ice to thaw in such conditions. Shackleton ordered the men to abandon the ship and begin setup of a camp on the packed ice, thankfully, as despite Shackleton’s hope that the boat would break free of the ice come spring and be able to continue sailing, the pressure put on the boat the following September from the breaking of the ice ended up sinking (albeit slowly) the then abandoned ship. For about two months Shackleton and his crew camped on flat ice floes, changing from floe to floe hoping one might drift them down to the inhabited Paulet Island. Unfortunately they were unable to reach it and using their lifeboats they were eventually able to make it to Elephant Island – that being the first time they had stood on dry land in over a year. Shackleton kept a watchful eye on all of his men, as usual, and in giving his mittens to his photographer Frank Hurley suffered from frostbite himself.
Shackleton then took five men and used a lifeboat to travel over 800 miles to a whaling station in South Georgia to get help. He would only pack four weeks of supplies into the lifeboat, knowing that if they could not reach their destination within a months time that they might as well consider themselves lost – he did not want to take supplies away from the men remaining on Elephant Island. Within 15 days they saw South Georgia, but inhospitable weather did not allow them to land immediately. When they were able to reach shore they had to pull up on the south side of the island, unfortunately knowing the whaling station was on the north side. Rather than get back in the lifeboat, three of the crew decided to attempt the journey across the mountainous land on foot – a distance of 32 miles (these guys couldn’t seem to catch a break, am I right?). They fastened screws into their boots to act as climbing shoes and had 50 feet of rope between the three of them. Not an easy journey… but they finally made it to the whaling station and got the help they needed. With the help of a Chilean vessel, Shackleton reached the rest of his 22 men on Elephant Island on the 30th of August, 1916 – 101 years ago today. After over a year and a half ordeal living on ice, every single man aboard the Endurance and under Shackleton’s command made it back alive. If Shackleton hadn’t already been considered a hero – he certainly was then!
William Caxton was born sometime during the years 1415-1424, which scholars have appropriated since his apprenticeship fees were paid in 1438. He grew up and was educated in the district of Kent, before leaving for London to be apprentice to Robert Large, a wealthy London dealer or luxury goods. Caxton made trips to Bruge after the death of Large in 1441, and eventually settled there in 1453. He was successful in his business as a merchant, and after becoming governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London he became a member of the household of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy and sister to two Kings of England! This was a fortuitous time in Caxton’s life, as due to his international travels for the Duchess’ household he observed the brand new printing press business in Germany (as the Gutenberg press had began in 1440) and immediately set up his own printing press in Bruge and within a few years produced the first book known to be printed in English, published in 1473 Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (“A Collection of the Histories of Troy” ) – a book of French courtly love translated by Caxton himself. (Fun antiquarian book world fact: only 18 copies of this printing still exist [kind of shocking there are even 18], and one sold by the Duke of Northumberland in 2014 and fetched over 1 million GBP.)
After his success with the printing in Bruge, Caxton brought his art back to England in 1476 and set up the country’s first ever press in a section of the Westminster Abbey Church. The first book printed in England itself was an edition of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Other early titles printed by Caxton included Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres translated by the king’s brother in law Earl Rivers, and Caxton’s own translations of the Golden Legend in 1483 and The Book of the Knight in the Tower. Caxton also printed the first ever English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as well as Le Morte d’Arthur.
Caxton’s death is recognized as taking place in 1491 or 1492, as that is when his work stopped being produced. He was succeeded by his Dutch employee Wynkyn de Worde, who is recognized for moving the printing of books in English away from an excitement enjoyed by the aristocrazy and nobility and toward the idea of printing for the masses. De Worde is often known as “England’s first typographer” and printed over 400 books in over 800 editions. Caxton, god bless him, printed 108 books of 87 different titles. However, Caxton did much of his translating himself, working on an honest desire to provide the best translation possible to his customers. Despite the fact that de Worde is known for standardizing the English language (as there were, at that time, so many different dialects and different spellings that it was often difficult to keep track), Caxton is absolutely also honored for beginning this process and though printing books of no remarkable or significant beauty, then at least for beginning the process of printing books in English at all!