
Stevens was the stolid son of Pennsylvania Dutch farmers, as he viewed it, who went off to Harvard and developed an exquisitely sensitive ear and eye. He never visited Europe and indeed he left the United States only twice, once to go to Havana and once on a Caribbean cruise. Yet his work reflects a cosmopolitan encounter with the most difficult themes of his time.

Williams – the son of an English father raised in the Caribbean and a mother of Spanish descent raised in Puerto Rico – grew up speaking Spanish at home in New Jersey, studied at a Swiss boarding school, had medical training in Leipzig and spent time in Paris in the ’20s. Yet his work employs the American vernacular to convey the sights and sounds of the immediate world in which he lived.
Birth of Albert Einstein
Birth of Albert Einstein

Birth of Wallace Stevens
Birth of Wallace Stevens
Birth of Pablo Picasso
Birth of Pablo Picasso
Birth of James Joyce
Birth of Virginia Woolf
Birth of I
Birth of James Joyce
Birth of Virginia Woolf
Birth of Igor Stravinsky
In New York City, Edison wires very first set of homes for electricity
Birth of Franz Kafka
Birth of Franz Kafka

Birth of William Carlos Williams
Birth of William Carlos Williams
8vo.; red cloth; stamped in black and gold; worn
1 of 2 descriptions

The first Kodak camera is offered to the public by George Eastman
The first Kodak camera is offered to the public by George Eastman