On this day in literature . . .

~ 1816 ~ Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre) is born in Thornton, Yorkshire.












~ 1910 ~ Mark Twain, 79, dies in Redding, Connecticut.

"I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks. They came in together; they must go out together.'" - Mark Twain

. . . . from William Dean Howells' eulogy:
"Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes—I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists. They were like one another and like other literary men. But Clemens was sole. Incomparable. The Lincoln of our literature."