Literary Birthday – 1 January – Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen was born 1 January 1897, and died 1 November 1973.

Catherine Drinker Bowen Quotes

1. In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.
2. For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realisation that he has come upon the right word.
3. Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.
4. Will the reader turn the page?
5. Writers seldom choose as friends those self-centered characters who are never in trouble, never make mistakes, and always count their change as it is handed to them.

Catherine Drinker Bowen was an American writer best known for her biographies. She won the National Book Award for Non-fiction in 1958 for The Lion and the Throne: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Coke. She received the Women’s National Book Association Award in 1962. Her works include John Adams and the American Revolution and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Franklin.

Image: Wikipedia

by Amanda Patterson

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