April 2025

First things first

-First book printed in English: "The Recuyell of the Historyes of Tryoe," a French romance of the Trojan War, printed by William Caxton at Bruges, 1475.

-First book printed in America: "The Bay Psalm Book," a metrical translation of the Psalms by the ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1640.

-First book copyrighted: "The Philadelphia Spelling Book," June 9, 1790.

-The first book printed at sea: This dubious distinction belongs to "The Bloddy Journal Kept by William Davidson on Board a Russian Pirate in the Year 1789." It was printed on board H.M.S. Caledonia in 1812 while she was cruising the Mediterranean Sea.

-The first bookseller in America: Samuel Gardner Drake appears to have openedup the first such store in 1830. Located in Boston, it specializedd in writings about American Indians. (Some authorities claim Benjamin Franklin was first.)

-The first book club in America: The Book-of-the-Month Club was established in New York City in 1926. The first selection to be distributed to the club's 4,750 members was Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel, "Lolly Willowes."

-The first dime novel: The early preecursor of the popularly priced paperback novel was the Beadle dime novel printed in New York. The first of that series was Mrs. Ann S. Stephens's "Maleaska," printed in 1860.

-The first paperback bookshop: The first bookshop to sell paperbacks exclusively was the City Lights Book Shop, established by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in San Francisco's North Beach in 1953.

-First book sold at Printed Page Bookshop in 2025: "The Odyssey."

Source: The Book Book, by Steven Gilbar.

This Month's Puzzler

On March 25, 1925, this woman was born in Savannah, Georgia. The only child of a real estate agent and his homemaker wife, she was raised in a devout Catholic home. She was only eleven when her father was diagnosed with lupus, and four years later was devastated by his death. She and her mother moved to a farm near Milledgeville, Georgia, where she finished high school and attended Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College and State University), graduating in 1945. While an undergraduate, she was editor of the school’s literary magazine.

In 1945, she received a scholarship to study journalism at the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa), but soon developed doubts about a career in journalism. She was advised to speak with Paul Engle, head of the university’s Program in Creative Writing (later to become the “Iowa Writers’ Workshop”). After overcoming strong initial reservations because of her extreme shyness and thick southern drawl, he accepted her into the program and ultimately became her greatest supporter. She received an M.F.A. degree in 1947.

In 1950, shortly after coming out with her first novel, Wise Blood (1950), she felt a numbness in her arms that was later diagnosed as the same form of lupus that had killed her father. Expecting to die in about five years, she moved back to Georgia to live with her mother at Andalusia Farm, the family’s ancestral estate near Milledgeville, Georgia (now listed on the National Register of Historic Places).

Between her initial diagnosis and her death from lupus at age 39 in 1964, she became one of America’s most respected short story writers. A representative of the so-called “Southern Gothic” tradition, her tales were collected in A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965). In 1971, The Complete Stories of _______ ______ won the National Book Award for Fiction, selected over John Updike’s Rabbit Redux and novels by E. L. Doctorow, Joyce Carol Oates, Cynthia Ozick, and Walker Percy.

Who is this person? (Answer below)

Puzzler answer

Flannery O'Connor, 1925-1964. If you like our Puzzler, find more on our Facebook page.

Thanks to Dr. Mardy Grothe for the use of his puzzler. Visit him at drmardy.com.

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