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December 4		Woolrich Noir
		On this day in 1903 the crime writer Cornell Woolrich was born. Woolrich wrote two dozen novels and over two hundred stories, most of them so dark that he has been called "the Poe of the 20th century." Looking at the many movies made from his work -- most famously, Hitchcock's Rear Window and Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black -- many have also dubbed him the "Father of Film Noir." Woolrich's private life was almost as bleak and black.
December 3		Stevenson, Belloc, Kids
		On this day in 1894 Robert Louis Stevenson died, and on this day in 1896 Hilaire Belloc's A Bad Child's Book of Beasts (2nd edition) was published. Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses was one of his most popular books, and Belloc's Beasts sold out within days of publication; both books are part of the "Golden Age of Children's Literature," a half-century span which includes Carroll, Kipling, Barrie, Graham and others.
December 2		Dickens in America
		On this day in 1867 Charles Dickens gave the first reading of his American tour. All but a few evenings over the five months were a sell-out, with some sleeping out overnight to beat a ticket line almost a half-mile long. Among the few who were not impressed were Emerson, Twain, and the little girl on the train who told Dickens she liked his books, though "I do skip some of the very dull parts, once in a while; not the short dull parts, but the long ones."