Authors, Poets & Novelists Posters & Prints: “Che...-Chr...”
for literature & language arts classrooms, homeschoolers, and scholars.

John Cheever
b. 5-27-1912; Quincy, MA
d. 6-18-1982; NY

John Cheever was a novelist and short story writer sometimes called the “Chekhov of the suburbs”, with his fictions set in the suburban areas of New York City, the east coast, and Rome. His short stories were awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1979.

John Cheever quotes ~
• “Art is the triumph over chaos.”
• “I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss - you can't do it alone.”
• “Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.”
• “The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.”

Anton Chekhov
b. 1-29-1850; Russia
d. 7-2-1904

Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, best remembered for his plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard, was also a medical doctor.

• The Portable Chekhov, Anton Chekhov

Chekhov quotes ~
• “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.”
• “There is nothing new in art except talent.”
• “We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.”
• “The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton
b. 5-29-1874; London
d. 6-14-1936

The Innocence of Father Brown is G.K. Chesterton's first mystery about the unassuming little priest who solves crimes by imagining himself inside the mind and soul of criminals.

G. K. Chesterton quotes ~
• “Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.”
• “Comforts that were rare among our forefathers are now multiplied in factories and handed out wholesale; and indeed, nobody nowadays, so long as he is content to go without air, space, quiet, decency and good manners, need be without anything whatever that he wants; or at least a reasonably cheap imitation of it.”
• “None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.”

Charles W. Chesnutt Stories, Novels and Essays (no commerically avaiable poster)

Charles W. Chesnutt
b. 6-20-1858; Cleveland, OH
d. 11-15-1932 (heart attack)

Novelist and short-story writer Charles W. Chesnutt broke new ground in American literature with his pioneering use of African-American folklore and candid exploration of racial identity.

Chestnutt was the son of free people of color (his paternal grandfather was a white slaveholder) and he could have “passed for white” by appearance but chose not to.

The NAACP awarded the Spingarn Medal to Chestnutt in 1928.

Kate Chopin
née O'Flaherty
b. 2-8-1851; St. Louis, MO
d. 8-22-1904; St. Louis, MO

Short story writer and novelist Kate Chopin, an avid reader as a child, was prescribed to write as a means of overcoming depression after the death of her husband and mother. Today she is considered to be a forerunner in feminist literature.

Kate Chopin quotes ~
• “But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!” The Awakening
• “To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts - absolute gifts - which have not been acquired by one's own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul.”
• “I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.”
• “I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breathe . . . ?”

• Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Stories: At Fault / Bayou Folk / A Night in Acadie / The Awakening / Uncollected Stories
• more Women Writers posters
• 19th Cent Authors posters

Agatha Christie
b. 9-15-1890; England
d. 1-12-1976

Agatha Christie, the author of novels, short stories and plays, was the creator of detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, is also noted as the best-selling writer of any kind, along with William Shakespeare. Only the Bible is known to have outsold her collected sales of roughly four billion copies of novels and UNESCO states that she is currently the most translated individual author in the world.

Agatha Christie quotes ~
• “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.”
• “Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.”
• “I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

• Agatha Christie Books

Winston Churchill
b. 11-30-1874; Blenheim Palace
d. 1-24-1965

Winston Churchill quotes ~
• “Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”
• “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” May, 1940
• “But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.” June, 1940
• “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” August, 1940
• “A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”
• “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
• “Eating words has never given me indigestion.”
• “Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.”
• “I am easily satisfied with the very best.”
• “This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.” (attributed)