December 22

1639 - Jean-Baptiste Racine, dramatic poet, is born at La Ferte-Milon in northern France. 1849 - Fyodor Dostoevsky is led out for execution, then pardoned at the last moment. 1869 - Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, author of "Miniver Cheevy", is born in Head Tide, Maine. 1880 - After returning from a trip to the Continent and catching cold at a London concert, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) dies at 61 in Chelsea. 1940 - Nathanael West, aged 37, and his wife, Eileen McKenney -- the heroine of Ruth McKenney's My Sister Eileen -- are killed in a car accident in El Centro, Calif.
--A Book of Days for the Literary Year