Almanac – April 10

1778 – William Hazlitt born. English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as an art critic, drama critic, social commentator, and philosopher, he was also a painter.

 He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language,  placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell, though  his work is currently little read and mostly out of print.

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1880 – Montague Summers born. English author and clergyman.

He is known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe.

He was responsible for the first English translation, published in 1928, of the notorious 15th-century witch hunter’s manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.

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1882 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti died. English poet, illustrator, painter and translator.

He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

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