December 5

In literary history

• 1870Alexandre Dumas, who had given France both Athos and Edmond Dantès, died at sixty-eight. The news was buried under the Franco-Prussian War, and his country barely noticed it had lost the man who built its most enduring heroes.

Writers born on December 5

• Joan Didion (1934)

The Daily Canon for December 5

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968).