Author, Poet & Novelist Posters & Prints: “La...-Lar...-”
for the literature, language arts and social studies classrooms, home schoolers, and scholars.

Selma Lagerlof
b. 11-20-1858; Marbacka, Sweden
d. 3-16-1940

Selma Lagerlof was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1909) “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.”

FYI - Zoologist and psychologist Konrad Lorenz, who is noted for his studies of instinctive behavior of birds, read Lagerlof's The Wonderful Adventures of Niles Holgersson, as a child.

and ... Greta Garbo's first major film role was in the dramatization of Lagerlof's novel Gösta Berlings saga.

FYI ~ Lagerlof was instrumental in helping Nelly Leonie Sachs escape Nazi Germany in 1940.

Selma Lagerlof quote ~
• “For what is a man's soul but a flame? It flickers in and around the body of a man as does the flame around a rough log.”

Alphonse de Lamartine
b. 10-21-1790; Macon, Burgundy, France
d. 2-28-1869; Paris

Alphonse de Lamartine was a politician and Romantic poet most noted for his poem “Le Lac” (“The Lake”) and for playing an important part in the founding of France's Second Republic.

He supported democracy, pacifism, the abolition of both slavery and the death penalty.

Alphonse de Lamartine quotes ~
• “A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.”
• “Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.”
• “Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.”
• “Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.”
• “The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.”
• “There is a woman at the begining of all great things.”
• “Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.”
• “To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.”

• Meditations Poetiques by Alphonse de Lamartine

Lady Caroline Lamb
née the Honourable Caroline Ponsonby
b. 11-13-1785; England
d. 1-26-1828

Novelist Lady Caroline Lamb is best remembered as having an affair in 1812 with the poet Lord Byron whom she described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Her 1816 novel, Glenarvon, which tells the story of the four month love affair that shook London society was published anonymously at the same time her family was trying to have her declared insane.

Lady Caroline was married to a friend of Byron's and a future Prime Minister of England, William Lamb, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne (and namesake of the future Melbourne, Australia).

• Lady Caroline Lamb at Amazon

Charles Lamb
b. 2-10-1775; London, England
d. 12-27-1834

Essayist Charles Lamb, who was friends with poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, wrote Essays of Elia, collaborated with his sister Mary Lamb (1764–1847) on the children's book Tales from Shakespeare.

Charles Lamb quotes ~
• “Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.”
• “I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.”
• “I'd like to grow very old as slowly as possible.”
• “Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.”
• “Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.”
• “The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.” (peace posters)
• “What is reading, but silent conversation?”
• “A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”

Andrew Lang
b. 3-31-1844; Selkirk, Scottish Borders, Scotland
d. 7-20-1912; Banchory, Aberdeenshire

Novelist, poet, and literary critic Andrew Lang is best remembered as a historian and anthropologist collecting folk and fairy tales.

Sidney Lanier
b. 2-3-1842; Macon, GA
d. 9-7-1881; North Carolina (tuberculosis)

Sidney Lanier was a poet and musician best remembered for “The Marshes of Glynn” (1878), and “Sunrise” (1881) which are generally considered his greatest works. They are part of an unfinished set of lyrical nature poems known as the “Hymns of the Marshes”, which describe the vast, open salt marshes of Glynn County on the coast of Georgia. He wrote these poems in a unique style he developed called logaoedic dactyls, a free-form, almost prose-like style of poetry.

Lanier, who was a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, was also a professor specializing in English novelists, Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonneteers, Chaucer, and the Anglo-Saxon poets at Johns Hopkins University. His wrote two text books, The English Novel and The Science of English Verse. He also played flute with the Peabody Orchestra in Baltimore.

FYI - his poetry was admired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and actress Charlotte Cushman.

Sidney Lanier quotes ~
• “Music is love in search of a word.”
• “If you want to be found stand where the seeker seeks.”

• Poems of Sidney Lanier

Ring Lardner
b. 3-6-1885; Niles, MI
d. 9-25-1933; New York

Ring Lardner was a sports columnist and short story writer best remembered for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.

Ring Lardner quotes ~
• “I've known what it is to be hungry, but I always went right to a restaurant.”
• “An optimist is a girl who mistakes a bulge for a curve.”
• “They (wives) are people who think when the telephone bell rings, it is against the law not to answer it.”
• “Although he is a very poor fielder, he is a very poor hitter.”
• “Where do they get that stuff about me being a satirist? I just listen.”

• Ring Around the Bases: The Complete Baseball Stories of Ring Lardner