Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints, “Bea...-Bel...-”
for the literature, language arts and social studies classrooms and homeschoolers.

Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
b. 1-24-1732; Paris, France
d. 5-17-1799

Beaumarchais, who is best remembered for his theatrical works was also a watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher (of Voltaire's later work), arms dealer and revolutionary.

His Figaro Trilogy was the basis of two notable operas - Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini's The Barber of Seville.

• The Figaro Trilogy: The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, The Guilty Mother
• Mademoiselle Mars, actress

Simone de Beauvoir
b. 1-9-1908; Paris, France
d. 4-14-1986

Simone de Beauvoir was a feminist, existentialist philosopher, and social theorist. Her metaphysical novels include She Came to Stay and The Mandarins though she is best remembered for her treatise The Second Sex, an analysis of women's oppression.

Simone de Beauvoir quotes ~
• “Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
• “Art is an attempt to integrate evil.”
• “All oppression creates a state of war.”
• “No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.”
• “If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.”
• “It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”
• "There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning."

Samuel Beckett
b. 4-13-1906; Dublin, Ireland
d. 12-22-1989; Paris

Samuel Beckett, playwright and novelist, was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature for his “writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”. Beckett's Waiting for Godot was influenced by his interest in Carl Jung.

Samuel Beckett quotes ~
• “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
• “I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.”
• “Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.”
• “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.”
• “You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.”

Brendan Behan
b. 2-9-1923; Dublin, Ireland
d. 3-20-1964; Dublin (alcoholism & diabetes)

Behan, a poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright, wrote in both Irish and English. He was committed to Ireland being a single independent republic and volunteered in the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Brendan Behan quotes ~
• “I am a drinker with writing problems.”
• “One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.”
• “All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.”
• “The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.”
• “Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.”

Aphra Behn (née Johnson)
b. 7-10-1640; England
d. 4-16-1689

Alphra Behn is considered to be one the first woman to earn a living by writing in England.

Aphra Behn quotes ~
• “Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.”
• “Come away; poverty's catching.”
• “That perfect tranquillity of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.”
• “All I ask, is the privilege for my masculine part the poet in me. . . . If I must not, because of my sex, have this freedom. . . I lay down my quill and you shall hear no more of me.”

• more women authors posters

Edward Bellamy
b. 3-26-1850; Chicopee Falls, MA
d. 5-22-1898; Chicopee Falls (tuberculosis)

Socialist Edward Bellamy is most remembered for his utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887, set in the year 2000. The book was enormously popular, ranked after Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Lew Wallace's Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

Edward Bellamy quotes ~
• “The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.”
• “If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second.”

• Authoritarian Socialism in America: Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement

Hilaire Belloc
b. 7-27-1870; La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France
d. 7-16-1953; England

Writer and historian Hilaire Belloc was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He often collaborated with G. K. Chesterton, notably on distributivism, a third-way economic philosophy applying the principles of Catholic Social Teaching ensure that most people will become owners of productive property.

The most widely known of his writings, “Cautionary Tales for Children” are humorous poems with an implausible moral. The book was illustrated by both Basil Blackwood and Edward Gorey.

FYI - Belloc was the great-great-grandson of Joseph Priestley.

Hilaire Belloc quotes ~
• “I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”
• “Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.”

• Peace & Justice Education Posters

Saul Bellow
b. 6-10-1915; Quebec, Canada
d. 4-5-2005; Brookline, MA

Saul Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; the National Medal of Arts; and the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature for his “exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion ... the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age.”

Saul Bellow quotes ~
• “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
• “What is art but a way of seeing?”
• “Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.”
• “A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.”
• “In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.”
• “When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.”