January 8

In literary history

• 1981Isabel Allende began writing a letter to her dying grandfather from her exile in Caracas. The letter grew into The House of the Spirits; her grandfather died before it arrived. January 8 has been the first day of every book she has written since.

Writers born on January 8

• Wilkie Collins (1824)

The Daily Canon for January 8

The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard (1849).