December 16

In literary history

• 1965W. Somerset Maugham died in Nice at ninety-one. His secretary moved the body from the hospital to his villa before informing anyone, to sidestep French law requiring an autopsy for hospital deaths. The last act was a piece of clever misdirection.

Writers born on December 16

• Jane Austen (1775)

The Daily Canon for December 16

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813).