On this day in literature
August 17
In literary history
- 1945George Orwell published Animal Farm, his fable about a pig revolution that mirrors Stalin's Soviet Union, after four British publishers refused it on the grounds it might upset the wartime alliance. The wartime alliance ended; the pigs have never gone out of print.
Writers born on August 17
- Ted Hughes (1930),
- V.S. Naipaul (1932),
- Jonathan Franzen (1959)
The Daily Canon for August 17
Crow by Ted Hughes (1970).