April is a month of many things; rain showers, daffodils, spring lambs. It’s a month for spring cleaning and getting the BBQ out early for a test run. But it has also been an important literary month throughout history too, and we’ve collected the six most important literary moments of all time that occurred in April.
It’s unclear exactly which day William Shakespeare was brought into this world, but we do know that on the 26th April 1564 he was baptised. Shakespeare shaped much of English literature as we know it, writing plays that have gone on to be the core reading materials of secondary education for generations. So many of the phrases we know as a standard part of our language today were first written by Shakespeare himself, such as bated breath, break the ice, in a pickle and one fell swoop.
On April 24th in the year 1800, the Library of Congress was first established in Washington D.C – it’s now known as the worlds largest library, boasting well over 33 million books.
That’s right, on April 14th of the year 1828, the first ever dictionary was published. It was written in American English and published by Noah Webster entitled: “American Dictionary of the English Language”.
Maya Angelou, who unfortunately passed away very recently, was born on the 4th April 1928. An American author and poet, she published several autobiographies, essays and books of extremely influential poetry in her time. She was very active in the civil rights movement, and worked with famous humanitarians like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
On 30th April 1859, the famous novel by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, was first published in ‘All the Year Round’, which was a literary periodical. It was then continuously published in weekly instalments – chapters if you will – until late November of the same year.
Much like William Shakespeare, Harper Lee brought the world material for generation upon generation of studying the English language through her world famous book “To Kill a Mockingbird”. She was born on 28th April 1926 and is still alive to this day; there are even rumours that we might be able to expect a sequel to Mockingbird!
Got any old books, CDs, DVDs or video games you’re looking to sell? Then head over to our Selling Basket now and see how much money you could make…