Three Writers

Going to Heaven

by Emily Dickinson

Going to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how,--
Indeed, I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven!--
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the shepherd's arm!

Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!
The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown";
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.

I'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.

"Going to Heaven" by Emily Dickinson. Public domain. 

It's the birthday of Anton Chekhov (books by this author), born in Taganrog, Russia (1860). He was in medical school and took up writing as a way to support his family. He wrote sketches and stories, never spending more than a day on any story. Two years after he graduated, Chekhov got a letter from the critic Dmitry Grigorovich, telling him that he was the most gifted writer of his generation and should take his work more seriously. Chekhov responded: "Your letter struck me like lightning. I became very emotional upon opening it. I nearly cried. I understand now that if I have a gift, I should honor it, which I have not always done in the past."
The next year he published a collection of short stories, At Dusk (1887), and it won the Pushkin Prize, a huge literary award in Russia. That same year, he wrote his first play. As he earned more from his writing, he didn't give up his medical practice — instead, he treated more and more poor patients free of charge.  He said, "Any idiot can face a crisis — it's day to day living that wears you out."

It was on this day in 1845 that Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was published in the New York Evening Mirror (books by this author). It was a huge sensation: Abraham Lincoln memorized it, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a fan letter to Poe. He was paid $9 for "The Raven," and it was extensively reprinted without his permission, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had written an unsigned article for the Mirror before about copyright law, saying, "Without an international copyright law, American authors may as well cut their throats," but there was no such law until 1891. His income in 1844 was $424; in 1845, he made $549.