The Little Red-Haired Girl

In July 1950, Charles Schulz discovered that a petite red-haired co-worker he had proposed to had decided to marry someone else. He was 27 and just about to launch a comic strip. In the years to come this disappointment would achieve an immortality far greater than Dante's love for Beatrice, or Petrarch's for Laura. The creator of Peanuts appears 13 times in A Book of Ages, getting a dog, having his cartoons rejected by the high school yearbook, being grand marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade, among other adventures. Petrarch appears in the book twice and Dante four times.