August 19

In literary history

• 1936Federico García Lorca was arrested at a friend's house in Granada and shot by Nationalist militia before dawn. He was thirty-eight and had just finished The House of Bernarda Alba; the play would not be performed in Spain until 1964.

Writers born on August 19

• Samuel Richardson (1689)

The Daily Canon for August 19

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850).