Literary Stamp Collecting

William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897 – 1962) was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and two Pulitzer Prizes in 1955 and 1963.
Faulkner is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. His notable works include A Fable, The Reivers, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!.
A stamp showing a portrait of Faulkner was issued by the U.S. Postal Service on August 3, 1987.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864) was an American short story writer and romance novelist. He is best known for his short stories and two widely read novels: The House of Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter.
A 20-cent commemorative stamp honoring Hawthorne was issued on July 8, 1983, in Salem, Massachusetts.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known), and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair.
The U.S. Postal Service honored F. Scott Fitzgerald with the issuance of a 23-cent commemorative stamp, marking the 100th anniversary of his birth, on September 27, 1996, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (1902 – 1968) was an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, and the novellas Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony. The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath, is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece.
The winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, Steinbeck has been called "a giant of American letters". His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature.
The U.S. Postal Service issued a 15-cent John Steinbeck stamp on February 27, 1979.

O. Henry, pseudonym of William Sydney Porter (1862 - 1910), was an American short story writer. O. Henry's short stories are beloved for their irony and skillful unfolding of plot, often ending with a surprise twist. His notable work include The Ransom of Red Chief, The Duplicity of Hargraves, The Cop and the Anthem, The Gift of the Magi and The Last Leaf.
On September 11, 2012 the U.S. Postal Service commemorates the 150th anniversary of the birth of O. Henry with a stamp in its Literary Arts series.

Mary Flannery O'Connor (1925 – 1964) was an American writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. Her writing reflected her own Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. Her notable works include collections of short stories A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories and Everything That Rises Must Converge, and the novel

O'Connor's Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was named the "Best of the National Book Awards" by Internet visitors in 2009.
The U.S. Postal Service issued a 93-cent (three ounce) stamp on June 5, 2015 to honor Flannery O'Connor.

Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914 – 1994) was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act, Going to the Territory, and a posthumous novel, Juneteenth.
U.S. Postal Service issued a 91-cent (3 ounce rate) stamp on February 18, 2014 to mark Ralph Ellison's 100th birthday.

Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She became the first female to receive the Pulitzer Prize. Her novels are celebrated for their vivid settings, satiric wit, ironic style, and moral seriousness. Her works The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and The House of Mirth are among the most memorable in American literature.
U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp on September 5, 1980 to commemorate Edith Wharton.

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (1888 – 1965), usually known as T. S. Eliot, was an essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and one of the major poets in the 20th century. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. His notable works include The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, Ash-Wednesday, and Four Quartets.
U.S. Postal Service issued a 22-cent stamp honoring T.S. Eliot on September 26, 1986 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III (1911 – 1983) was an American playwright and author of many stage classics. Along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller he is considered among the three foremost playwrights in 20th century American drama. Williams received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. Among his best known work were A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Sweet Bird of Youth.
The U.S. Postal Service honored Tennessee Williams with a 32-cent stamp issued on October 13, 1995 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Happy Birthday to Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson (1810-1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, an English novelist and short story writer whose novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the poorest. Here is an image of a stamp depicting the author and a scene from her novel North and South (1854–55), printed by photogravure, and issued by Great Britain on July 9, 1980 as one of a set of four stamps honoring Victorian women novelists, Scott No. 918, plus an 1851 portrait of Mrs. Gaskell by English artist George Richmond (1809-1896).

- nethryk

Thornton Niven Wilder (1897 – 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day. Wilder also lectured and published extensively. His topics addressed play writing, fiction, and the role of the artist in society.
The U.S. Postal Service honored Thornton Wilder on the 100th anniversary of his birth with the issuance of a 32-cent commemorative stamp on April 17, 1997, in Hamden, Connecticut.

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898 – 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster and By the Waters of Babylon. Benét also received the O. Henry Story Prize, the Roosevelt Medal, and a second Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for the posthumously-published Western Star, the first part of an epic poem based on American history. In 2009, The Library of America selected Benét's story The King of the Cats for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales.
The U.S. Postal Service issued a 32-cent Stephen Vincent Benet stamp on July 22, 1998, in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Happy Birthday to French philosopher, art critic, and writer Denis Diderot (1713-1784)! Here is an image of a semi-postal (charity) stamp featuring a portrait of the philosopher, designed and engraved by Charles Mazelin (1882-1964), and issued by France on June 7, 1958, Scott No. B323, Y&T No. 1168, plus an image of a bust of Denis Diderot by French neoclassical sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828).

- nethryk

Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982) was a Russian-born American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She wrote both technical and popular works of philosophy, and she presented her philosophy in both fictional and non-fictional forms. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy of Objectivism has influenced several generations of academics and public intellectuals, as well as having had widespread popular appeal.
U.S. Postal Service issued a 33-cent Ayn Rand commemorative stamp on April 22, 1999, in New York, New York.