Portrait of Anthony Burgess

Birthday profile

Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess, English author, playwright, and critic (died 1993)

Born
February 25, 1917
Died
November 22, 1993
Zodiac sign
Pisces
Birth year
1917

About Anthony Burgess

John Anthony Burgess Wilson (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), commonly known as Anthony Burgess, was an English writer, screenwriter, and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel. Burgess produced a number of other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a literary critic for several publications, including The Observer and The Guardian, and wrote studies of classic writers, notably James Joyce. A versatile linguist, Burgess lectured in phonetics, and translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus Rex, and the opera Carmen, among others. He was nominated and shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. Burgess also composed over 250 musical works; he considered himself as much a composer as an author, although he achieved considerably more success in writing. At his confirmation, the name Anthony was added and he became John Anthony Burgess Wilson. Burgess was indifferent to music until he heard on his home-built radio "a quite incredible flute solo", which he characterised as "sinuous, exotic, erotic", and became spellbound.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Anthony Burgess was born

Anthony Burgess was born in 1917. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1917

  • Best-selling book"Mr. Britling Sees It Through" – H.G. Wells

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentProfessional sports curtailed as America enters World War I
  • Top headlineUS enters World War I
  • Technology milestoneFirst practical military use of sonar
  • World population~1.77B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWoodrow Wilson
  • U.S. population100.8M

1917 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Anthony Burgess's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19172026
Gas$0.25$3.45/gal
Population100.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.