The Nobel Prize for Literature was divided equally between poet Frédéric Mistral and dramatist José Echegaray y Eizaguirre.

Fiction Bestsellers:
1. Winston Churchill, The Crossing
2. Ellen Glasgow, The Deliverance
3. Anonymous (Katherine Cecil Thurston), The Masquerader
4. Miriam Michelson, In the Bishop’s Carriage
5. Mary Johnston, Sir Mortimer
6. George Barr McCutcheon, Beverly of Graustark
7. John Fox Jr., The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come
8. Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
9. Henry Harland, My Friend Prospero
10. Stewart Edward White, The Silent Places

The only book on the above list that I know is Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and I must commit heresy and admit that as a child I liked it every bit as much as the more famous Anne of Green Gables by L.M> Montgomery. They seemed to me to be the same book, or at least in the same series, with Rebecca Rowena Randall and her maiden aunts substituting quite well for Anne and Marilla. Since Rebecca actually came first, I wonder if L.M. Montgomery ever read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, either before or after she wrote her own story of a young girl from a large family sent to live with a stern spinster lady. Rebecca and Anne both bring joy and laughter and a bit of benevolent turmoil to a rather joyless home.

Similarities between Anne of Green Gables and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm:
Rebecca is the second oldest of seven children, and her father is dead as the book opens. She has been quite involved in taking care of her siblings since her mother is so overworked, but she is sent to live with her aunts Jane and Miranda because her mother can no longer provide for all of the children. Anne is a poverty-stricken orphan who has been taking care of other people’s children in her foster homes, and she comes to live with sister and brother Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. Both Anne and Rebecca are imaginative, joyful, and exuberant, sometimes too much so. Marilla and Aunt Miranda are determined to turn their respective charges into proper young ladies. Matthew and Aunt Jane become allies for Anne and for Rebecca in the face of their more domineering sisters. Rebecca and Anne both turn out to be good students, especially in English and literature, and both of them study to become teachers. Both girls read and write poetry. Both girls have a more prosaic best friend for whom they are the catalyst for imaginative adventures.

Both books are good, and Ms. Montgomery was probably the better writer, hence the continued and greater popularity of Anne of Green Gables. However, I think Anne Shirley and Rebecca Rowena Randall would have been “kindred spirits” had they met each other, and perhaps Ms. Wiggin and Ms. Montgomery would have been friends, too.

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant:
Henry James, The Golden Bowl
Henry Adams, Mt.-St. Michel and Chartres
Thorstein Veblen, Theory of Business Enterprise
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
W.H. Hudson, Green Mansions. Semicolon review here. Green Mansions is a particularly interesting and romantic product of the times, set in South America.

As for this list, for the most part I know the authors, but not the books. I think I know Mr. Weber’s basic premise which was that Protestantism lends itself well to and encourages capitalism and business success. Ye olde Protestant work ethic.

Bloomsday, the day on which the action of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1922) takes place in Dublin, was June 16, 1904.

Also on December 27, 1904, James Barrie’s stage play “Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” debuted in London. It was hugely successful and inspired Walt Disney’s Peter Pan movie (1953), Hook (1991), a movie starring Robin Williams as Peter, and Finding Neverland (2004), a movie starring Johnny Depp as James Barrie.