There are 4 entries for this date: James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Havelock Ellis and Talleyrand-Perigord.

On this date in 1882, novelist James Joyce was born in Ireland, into a prosperous, Roman Catholic family. They moved constantly in search of cheaper lodgings after his father's drinking and financial irresponsibility landed the large family into poverty. James was educated in convents and by the Christian Brothers, who pressured him to become a Jesuit. But Joyce rejected Catholicism by the age of 16. He enrolled in the University College of Dublin in 1898. As a student, he published a broadside, "The Holy Office," in 1904, satirizing the Celtic revival. After living for a time in Paris, Joyce moved to Trieste, Italy, with Nora Barnacle of Galway, whom he married. Dubliners, a book of short stories, was published in 1914. Although James' last glimpse of Ireland was in 1912, as an expatriate he meticulously set his novels there. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published in London in 1916, after an enraged Irish printer had destroyed the first edition of the novel in 1912. James and his family, including children Giorgio and Lucia, lived on the continent thereafter. Ulysses, documenting one day in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin circa 1904, was published in Paris in 1922. It was banned for many years in Great Britain and the United States. It took Joyce 17 years to finish the stream of consciousness Finnegans Wake, published in 1939. Joyce employed the idea of "epiphanies," or sudden consciousness, in his work. According to photographer Andres Serrano, when he told Joyce he wanted to capture his soul, Joyce replied: "Forget the soul. Just get the tie right." (Cited in Who's Who in Hell by Warren Allen Smith) Joyce once referred to Ireland as "that scullery maid of Christendom" (cited in "Happy Bloomsday" by Andrew Lewis Conn, Village Voice, June 15, 2004). D. 1941.

On this date in 1905, Ayn Rand, nee Alice Rosenbaum, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, to a nonobservant Jewish family. She became an atheist as a teenager. Immigrating to the United States in 1921, she renamed herself Ayn (rhymes with "mine") after a Finnish woman; the "Rand" was inspired by her Remington-Rand typewriter. She worked for Hollywood studios intermittently for 20 years, starting as an extra for Cecil B. DeMille and progressing to screenwriter. She married actor Frank O'Connor in "a 'proper' nonreligious ceremony in a judge's chambers."

Rand's first novel We the Living (1936) was not initially successful. The Fountain Head (1943) secured her place in literature, followed by Atlas Shrugged (1957). Rand's novels promote her philosophy of Objectivism, promulgated in John Galt's famous speech from Atlas Shrugged. Galt termed faith "a short-circuit destroying the mind." Rand's lecture, "Faith and Force: the Destroyers of the Modern World," was delivered at Yale University in 1960. The enigmatic, controversial and charismatic Rand died in 1982.

On this date in 1859, Henry Havelock Ellis was born in England. The sociologist, who also earned a medical doctor's degree, wrote notably on the psychology of sex and criminal reform. His writings include Man and Woman (1894), Sexual Inversion (1897), which advanced the idea that homosexuality is not a disease or a crime, Affirmations (1897), where his agnostic views are found, and My Life (posthumous, 1940). His landmark 6-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex, was published between 1897-1910. The forward-thinking sexologist's views--considered so controversial a bookseller was arrested for selling one of his books--are largely accepted today. Ellis hobnobbed with such notables as Olive Schreiner, G.B. Shaw, A.C. Swinburne and Margaret Sanger. D. 1939.

On this date in 1754, Prince Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord was born in France. The Catholic priest became an agnostic and was recognized as one of the world's greatest diplomats. Educated for the Roman Catholic Church, he was ordained at 21, and was consecrated Bishop of Autun in 1785. During the Revolution, he became President of the Constituent Assembly and helped frame the Constitution. He proposed the nationalization of church property, and worked for a secular system of education. Tallyrand abandoned his bishopric in 1791, then was excommunicated. Parting with the violent revolutionaries, he went abroad for a time, and upon returning was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was Napoleon's main advisor in reducing the power of the Papacy. His career flourished under Napoleon and Louis XVIII. Tallyrand married in 1802 and was an agnostic. D. 1839.