May 8

In literary history

• 1835Hans Christian Andersen published the first four fairy tales in Copenhagen, sixty-one unbound pages intended, he said, for adult readers. His publisher paid him thirty rixdollars. No one thought to ask the children.
• 1880Gustave Flaubert collapsed and died at his home in Normandy, his unfinished novel Bouvard et Pécuchet open before him. He had spent eight years on it, hating every page, convinced it would outlast Madame Bovary.

Writers born on May 8

• Edward Gibbon (1737),
• Thomas Pynchon (1937)

The Daily Canon for May 8

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973).