August 5

In literary history

• 1850Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne met for the first time while sheltering from a thunderstorm in a Berkshires cave, champagne and Bryant's poetry in hand. Melville was deep in the manuscript that would become Moby-Dick and dedicated it to Hawthorne when it was done.

Writers born on August 5

• Guy de Maupassant (1850)

The Daily Canon for August 5

Boule de Suif by Guy de Maupassant (1880).