Author Mark Twain died in on April 21, 1910. He was born in 1835 when the comet had last visited our solar system. Twain wrote in his autobiography: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), 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.'”

Important books of 1910:
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House.
Sigmund Freud, Origins and Development of Psychoanalysis.
E. M. Forster, Howards End.

For children in 1910:
Maida’s Little Shop by Inez Haynes Irwin. One of Jen’s favorites: “Maida’s Little Shop was originally published in 1910, and was the first of a series of 15 books about the motherless daughter of a magnanimous tycoon, and her close-knit group of friends.”

Andrew Lang’s last fairy book, The Lilac Fairy Book, was published in 1910. In all, Andrew Lang published twelve fairy-tale collections, starting in 1889 with The Blue Fairy Book. You can listen to all of Lang’s fairy tale collection books at Librivox.

Also in 1910, American illustrator and author Rose O’Neill’s first children’s book was published, The Kewpies and Dottie Darling. A few years later Kewpie dolls, based on Ms. O’Neill’s characters, became popular. There’s something about the Kewpie doll that I find disturbing. It’s supposed to be cute and innocent, but it seems . . . sort of sinister.