You Must Know...Facts and Funs of Literature
1) Jane Austen was jealous of Sir
Walter Scott...
July 1814, when Sir Walter
Scott’s first novel Waverly was
published, Jane Austen was a bit jealous. She wrote the following in a letter
to her niece:
“Walter Scott has no business
to write novels, especially good ones.—It is not fair.—He has fame and profit
enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s
mouths.—I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverly if I can help it—but
fear I must.”
Ironically, today Jane Austen
is a much more popular author than her contemporary Sir Walter Scott.
2) The Canterbury Tales is the
most expensive book of all -
The original copies of
Canterbury Tales were printed in 1477 by William Caxton, the first printer to
introduce the printing press in England. Only one of these first copies is
still in private hands and was sold in an auction on July 8, 1998, for £4,621,500, making it the most expensive book
ever sold. The news of an original copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales made it
to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1998.
3) Chaucer’s Monk was really
guilty of gluttony –
Chaucer’s Monk in the
Canterbury Tales was described in the Prologue as “a
lord ful fat and in good point” (line 200). A new study finds that
Chaucer’s description of the Monk as a person who loves to eat and is
overweight is accurate. A 2004 study by archaeologists at University College
London found that monks during medieval days were actually gluttons.
Archaeologists studied one hundred monk skeletons at 3 abbeys dating from the
medieval period. The bones were thick; joint problems from obesity were
evident; and there were signs of arthritis—all of these proved that monks were
actually overweight, as portrayed in paintings and literature of medieval times.
Another study estimates that some monks consumed about 6,000 calories a day.
Eating was a physical pleasure monks could enjoy!
4) Poets' Corner
Chaucer was the first poet to
be buried in Westminster Abbey—initiating the Poets’ Corner. Today there are 29 poets buried and 55 poets commemorated in the Poets’
Corner.
5) Daniel Defoe or Foe
The famous author of Robinson Crusoe changed
his name in 1703 from Foe to Defoe. He believed that Defoe is “more socially
and upward sounding” than Foe is.
6) Charles Dickens and A
Christmas Carol -
His most famous story, A
Christmas Carol, became more popular than his other classics, such as Oliver
Twist, though it received less attention from literary critics than some of the
other Dickens’s novels. Dickens, at age 31, wrote the short novel in 6 weeks and
rushed it to be published before Christmas. The book was out December 19,
1843—the same year that the first Christmas card on record was sent (go to
Christmas, scroll down to "Christmas Cards"). A Christmas Carol was
Dickens’s first unserialized work. Most of the characters were based on people
he knew personally, including Ebenezer Scrooge—based on Ebenezer Scroggie, a
counselor at Edinburgh. Within its first year of publication, A Christmas Carol
sold 15,000 copies and inspired the production of about 10 stage dramas.
7) Benjamin Franklin and his Achievements
Writer, politician, scientist,
Benjamin Franklin’s accomplishments were numerous. His great literary works are
Poor Richard’s Almanack, Father Abraham's Sermon or The Way to Wealth, and
Autobiography. Besides his literary and political accomplishments, the
following are several more of his achievements:
• He proved that lightening is
electricity.
• He invented the lightning
rod.
• He invented a special cast
iron stove—the Franklin stove.
• He invented a special
rocking chair.
• He invented a carriage
odometer.
• He discovered the gulf
stream, or ocean current.
• He invented the bifocals,
which cost in 1785 around $100, just about how much they cost today.
• He invented a glass
harmonica.
• He founded a fire
department.
• He founded the first lending
public library (with a book lending system similar to our modern public
libraries’ system).
• He founded the first fire
insurance company.
• He helped to open a
hospital.
• He helped to create the first
efficient postal system in America.
• He helped found the
University of Pennsylvania.
Proverbs
Franklin was famous for his
proverbs, mostly published in Poor Richard’s Almanack. The following are a few
of his proverbs:
• To find out a girl’s faults,
praise her to her girl friends.
• If Jack is in love, he is no
judge of Jill’s beauty.
• Kill no more pigeons than
you can eat.
• To lengthen thy life, lessen
thy meals.
• Plough deep while sluggards
sleep.
• Having been poor is no
shame, but being ashamed of it is.
• Genius without education is
like silver in the mine.
• A countryman between two
lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
• Never confuse motion with
action.
• Whatever is begun in anger
ends in shame.
• If you would persuade, you
must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
• Any fool can criticize,
condemn, and complain, and most fools do.
Epitaph
At age 22, while working as a
printer, Benjamin Franklin wrote the following epitaph for his grave:
“The body of Benjamin
Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and
stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms; but the work
shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and
more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author. He was born Jan. 6.
1706. Died 17—.”
Many years later, he changed
his mind. Today the following inscription is on his grave: “Benjamin and
Deborah Franklin: 1790.”
8) Nathaniel Hawthorne – Reunited
with his wife after 140 Years
In 2006, after 142 years of
separation, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife
Sophia were finally reunited—or at least their body remains were.
Hawthorne died in 1864 and was buried in the Author’s Ridge at Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts (along with Concord’s finest Romantic writers:
Thoreau, Alcott, and Emerson). However, Sophia, who outlived her husband by
seven years, died while living in London, and so did their daughter Una.
Hawthorne’s great grandchild 93-year old Joan Deming Ensor consented that the
bones of Hawthorne’s wife and daughter be brought from England to Concord and
buried with Hawthorne. A ceremony took place June 26, 2006.
9) Immanuel Kant - A Philosopher
One of the greatest
enlightenment philosophers, Immanuel Kant attempted to bring a compromise
between empiricism (John Locke) and rationalism (Rene Descartes and others).
His metaphysical philosophy was based on separating the noumenal (that of
itself—the true nonphysical reality of things) and the phenomenal (physical)
worlds. His three most famous works are Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of
Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment.
A Peculiar,
Meticulous Man
Kant’s personal life is known
for its peculiarity and oddity. The following are a few fun facts about Kant’s
personal life:
• The farthest he traveled
from his birth place (Königsberg, Germany) was 40 miles. He went that far only
because he had to travel with a family for whom he was hired to tutor its
children.
• He was a creature of
discipline and habit. He took his walk everyday at 3:00 pm sharp. It is said
that people set their clocks and watches by his walk. Even on a rainy day, his
servant walked along with him to hold the umbrella. It is believed that the
only time he was late on his walk was the day he read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
Emile, or On Education. His late walk on that day confused the town people!
• He endeavored to be healthy.
While outside in public, he tried to breathe through his nose and not his
mouth, to filter out germs. Sometimes he even did not respond to greeters for
fear of opening his mouth and breathing in a sickness.
• He was less than 5 feet tall
with a drooping left shoulder.
• He was very slow and logical
in making all his decisions. Twice he thought of marrying, but the time it took
him to weigh in all issues and reasons to make a decision was too long. By the
time made the decision to marry, he was too late: one woman already married
someone else, and the other was no longer in town.
• He opposed reading novels,
and expressed a dislike to folk music.
• Toward the end of his life,
he used his reason, logic, meticulous calculations, and extensive studies of
medical journals to calculate how long he would live.
• Toward the end of his life,
he said, “Life is a burden to me; I am tired of bearing it.” He would not
commit suicide believing suicide to be morally wrong.
• His last words were, “It is good!” He died February 12, 1804.
10)
John Keats
John Keats was only about 5
feet tall—nevertheless, by the time he died at age 24, he was a literary giant,
surpassing any other 24-year old English writer. We can only wonder if Keats
were to live to be an old man if his popularity today would exceed that of
Shakespeare.
Height of other British
Romantic Authors:
William Blake: 5 feet
William Wordsworth: 5 feet, 9
inches
Percy Shelley: 5 feet, 11
inches
11)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Two years after Lonfellow's
wife’s death in a fire and while still grieving her death, Longfellow received
the news that his son Lieutenant Charles Appleton Longfellow was seriously
injury fighting in the Battle of New Hope Church, Virginia, for the Army of the
Potomac during the American Civil War. On Christmas Day in 1863, saddened by
the news, he heard the church bell ringing and was inspired to write one of the
most popular Christmas songs, “I Heard the Bells
on Christmas Day.” The following are four of its seven original
stanzas.
I heard the bells on Christmas
Day
Their old familiar carols
play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will
to men!
Then from each black accursed
mouth
The cannon thundered in the
South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will
to men!
And in despair I bowed my
head;
"There is no peace on
earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will
to men!"
Then pealed the bells more
loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor
doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will
to men!"
12)
Christopher Marlowe - Assassination or Murder?
The story behind Marlowe’s
death at age 29 is controversial. According to traditional history, Marlowe
died in a brawl at a local tavern, stabbed to death by another man. However,
the fact that Marlowe was somewhat involved with some mysterious issue with
Queen Elizabeth makes the reason for his death to be a possible political
assassination. Therefore, his temper revealed in his last brawl that caused his
death might be just a cover up of an unknown bigger reason for his death. For
more information on this topic, check out The World of Christopher Marlowe, by
the scholar David Riggs.
Where Would Shakespeare Be
without Marlowe?
Marlowe, a Shakespeare
contemporary, rose to fame in his twenties, before Shakespeare had accomplished
any notable work. Marlowe was a pioneer in composing blank verse (unrhymed
poetry) and using iambic pentameter for his two famous plays (Tamberlaine and
Dr. Faustus). Shakespeare, who rose to fame soon after Marlowe, copied
Marlowe’s style in all of his thirty-seven plays.
13)
John Milton
John Milton composed the
greatest epic in the English language Paradise Lost after he was blind (between
1658 and 1664). He claimed that he received nightly divine inspiration, and
during the day he composed his epic. Paradise Lost is packed with biblical and
mythological allusions—attesting to Milton’s vast knowledge and incredible
memory.
14)
Sir Isaac Newton -The World Will End in 2060!
Sir Isaac Newton wrote a
letter in 1704 in which he predicted that the end of the world would be in
2060. The father of modern science had an interest in biblical prophecy as
well. Newton came up with this prediction after a detailed study of various
biblical texts.
15)
Sylvia Plath -Young Talent
Sylvia Plath, who did not
reach her 31st birthday, gained a status with the greatest 20th century
American writers—as a children’s author, novelist, poet, and a short story
writer. However, it seems today she is most famous for her depression,
emotional struggles, and suicide attempts.
Suicide
Her first suicide attempt was
during a summer when she was a college student at Smith College in Northampton,
Massachusetts. She swallowed sleeping pills under her house.
Sylvia Plath and
Ted Hughes
Later she married the English
poet Ted Hughes (who in 1984 became the British Poet Laureate until his death
in 1998). She had two children and a miscarriage. Losing an unborn child and
dealing with an unfaithful husband did not help her emotional instability.
Sylvia and her husband separated; she became a single mother dealing with
sicknesses and lack of money. Just a few months after separating from her
husband and moving into an apartment with her two children, on February 11,
1963, she committed suicide. While her children slept, she went into the
kitchen, shut the door, and sealed with towels any cracks. She then turned the
oven gas on and stuck her head deep into the oven.
16)
Edgar Allan Poe - "The Raven"
“The Raven” is Poe’s most
famous poem. It was first published in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845,
and brought immediate fame to its author, but very little money.
The following is the story
behind “The Raven” as told in a lecture by the poet himself. Poe explained how
he came up with the idea for the poem through the following steps.
• Length: Poe started with a
goal of writing a 100-line poem, believing that poetry (or prose) should not be
too long that they could not be read in one sitting (the poem ended up being 108 lines).
• Effect and Tone: Poe wanted
beauty to be its effect and melancholy to be its tone.
• Letters: Poe thought of two
letters that their sound he thought would fit the melancholy tone, the vowel /o/ and the consonant /r/.
• Word: Thinking of a word
that includes both letters,
• Poe chose the word “nevermore” to be repeated in the poem.
• Character: Poe wanted a
nonhuman creature to repeat the word. His first choice of a parrot did not fit
his tone. He settled on a raven.
• Topic:
Now that Poe has the tone as melancholy, the word “nevermore,” and the
character the raven, he chose the topic to be the death of a woman mourned by a
young man.
• Setting:
Poe than established the setting: a beautiful room filled with memories of the
dead woman. The room will combine both the lover and the raven.
• Plot:
Poe than created the plot: late at night, a raven flies to a lit room of a
weary student doing school work late into the night and mourning the death of
his love Lenore. The raven, reminding the young scholar of Lenore and refusing to leave the bust of
pallas it perched on, added much to the scholar's distress.
17)
Samuel Richardson –
Samuel
Richardson wrote the longest novel in the English language, Clarissa, or, the
History of a Young Lady — about 1 million words. He is known to be the first English modern
novelist, and was the first English writer whose main characters were women,
not men. Clarissa was published in 1748. It
is an epistolary novel—composed entirely of letters written by the characters.
These letters reveal plot, conflict, characterization, and themes of the novel.
The story is of Clarissa and the young man Lovelace whose desperation to marry
Clarissa and not her sister compels him to abduct her hoping she’ll consent to
marry him. It is a story of love, abduction, rape, revenge written in what many
consider to be endless, tedious letters.
18)
Mary Rowlandson -A Pioneer
Mary Rowlandson established
two important “firsts” in American literary history:
1. She was the first American
writer to establish a new indigenous American literary genre (the captivity
narrative).
2. She was the first woman in
America to have a best seller. Her work A Narrative of the Captivity and
Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson went through four editions within its first
year of publication in 1682.
Long Title
The full title of Rowlandson's
captivity narrative is among the longest titles of literary works.
Image to the right is the
title page for the first publication in 1682.
The following is the title she
wrote for the second edition:
The sovereignty and goodness
of GOD, together with the faithfulness of his promises displayed, being a
narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, commended
by her, to all that desire to know the Lord's doings to, and dealings with her.
Especially to her dear children and relations. The second Addition Corrected
and amended. Written by her own hand for her private use, and now made public
at the earnest desire of some friends, and for the benefit of the afflicted.
Deut. 32.39. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no god with me, I kill
and I make alive, I wound and I heal, neither is there any can deliver out of
my hand.
Natives executing a Puritan
woman - History of Her Captivity
During the 1670s, in the New
England area, tensions between native Americans and European settlers escalated
resulting in King Philip’s War (1675-1676). Metacomet (known to the settlers as
King Philip), chief of the Wampanoag Indians united with other native tribes in
order to fight and protect their lands. On February 10, 1676, a Wampanoag party
attacked Mary Rowlandson’s town, Lancaster, Massachusetts (30 miles west of
Boston). As a result, Mary was taken captive. Her captivity narrative narrates
her 20 removes (marching from one location to another). These removes took her
on a journey of 150 miles, until she was ransomed for 20 pounds on May 2, 1676.
She saw the death of her daughter and other relatives and friends.
19)
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter
Harry Potter sold about 400
million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 65 languages.
Though before the book's
popularity, Joanne Rowling had some difficulty finding a publisher that
believed her book could amount to anything. Finally Bloomsburry Press agreed to
publish the first edition of Harry
Potter, but only printed 500 copies for the first edition for fear of them not
selling. Also the publisher requested that the author would not use her first
name (Joanne) but rather her initials to make it less obvious that the author
is a woman assuming that the book's main audience young boys would not want to
read a wizard book written by a woman. Since Joanne Rowling did not have a
middle name, she chose K for Kathleen.
Harry Potter, First Edition
Those who bought a first
edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone could could make a fortune
today! Harry Potter's first edition copies are worth thousands.
• A hardback first edition
copy was sold for £10,575 at a Sotheby's auction in 2002.
• Another soft cover first
edition copy was sold at the Dallas Auction House for $19,120.
• In August 2005, AbeBooks.com
sold a first edition for £20,000.
• Another anonymous bidder
paid $40,326 for a first edition at Christie’s auction house in London.
20)
William Shakespeare
For 2004, the US defense
budgeted $1 million to bring productions of William Shakespeare’s Othello to
several military bases.
All of Shakespeare’s plays
(Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies) were first published in a volume called
First Folio in 1623 (seven years after his death). In 1685, the Fourth Folio
was printed. With fewer than 80 copies left today of the Fourth Folio, one copy
was up for sale by Argosy Book Store, New York, a few years ago for $185,000.
Go to Bible to learn about a
possible subliminal message that Shakespeare inserted in the King James
translation of the English Bible.
21)
Edward Taylor
Taylor is a metaphysical
lyricist whose greatest poems were forgotten and unknown to the world for about
200 years. Taylor died in 1729; later his grandson Ezra Stiles, president of
Yale University, brought Taylor’s poetry to Yale University library where they
were forgotten until their discovery in 1937 by Thomas H. Johnson. Today he is
considered to be the greatest American metaphysical poet. His poetry is full of
farfetched and elaborate metaphors and similes, allusions, puns, and paradoxes.
His most famous are his Preparatory Meditations before My Approach to the Lord's Supper, 217 poems
written as means to meditate to prepare him to partake of the Lord’s Super.
22)
Alfred Tennyson -Painting of Alfred Tennyson, by George Frederic Watts
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron
Tennyson, had a very early poetical talent. He wrote the following about his
early gift: “The first poetry that moved me was my own at five years old.
When I was eight, I remember making a line I thought grander than Campbell, or
Byron, or Scott. I rolled it out, it was this: ‘With slaughterous sons of
thunder rolled the flood’—great nonsense of course, but I thought it fine.”
23)
Michel Thaler - No Verbs!
Michel Thaler, a French
writer, published a 233-page novel without using any verbs. The novel is Le
Train de Nulle Part (The Nowhere Train). Thaler states that verbs are like
weeds among flowers; the weeds should be removed.
24)
Henry David Thoreau - Harvard
Diploma Not Worth $5
When Thoreau graduated from
Harvard, he did think it was worth it to pay the $5 fee to receive his diploma.
He left without a diploma.
Last Words
Thoreau’s last two words while
on his death bed were “moose” and “Indian.” The meaning and significance of
these two words is still not clear today.
At Walden Pond: a statue of
Thoreau and a replica of his Walden Pond cabin.
25)
Mark Twain
Mark Twain was the first
notable American author who placed black and white Americans on the same social
rank—Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
“All modern literature comes
from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. If you read it, you must
stop where Jim is stolen from the boys. That’s the real end. The rest is just
cheating.” Ernest Hemingway
Mark Twain’s Sayings
• Honesty is the best
policy—when there is money in it.
• The serpent should have been
forbidden, not the apple—because they would have eaten the serpent.
• Habit is not to be thrown
out of the window, but it is to be coaxed down the stairs, one step at a time.
• I never smoke more than one
cigar–pause—at a time.
• Everyone is a moon and has a
dark side which he never shows to anybody.
• There are two times in a
man’s life when he should not speculate—when he can’t afford it and when he
can.
• The secret source of humor
itself is not joy, but sorrow.
• Everything in human is
pathetic.
• I have seen slower and
lazier people [than Mark Twain], but they were dead.
• Clothes make the man; naked
people have little or no influence in society.
• Don’t go to sleep; so many
people die there.
26)
Jonathan Edwards - A Legacy
In Enfield, Connecticut, in
1741, Jonathan Edwards authored and preached America’s most famous sermon,
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
He is a theologian, who played perhaps the greatest role to bring the Great
Awakening to America. But what kind of descendents did he and his wife Sarah
Edwards leave behind?
Steven J. Lawson, in his book,
The Legacy published by Multnomah
Books, 1998 (p. 13-14), cites a study by New York state sociologists who traced
Jonathan Edwards’s legacy by tracing his male descendents. The following was
the result of Edwards’s male descendents, proving the influence two parents can
have on many generations to come:
• 300 clergymen, missionaries,
or theological professors
• 120 college professors
• 110 lawyers
• 60 (or more) physicians
• 60 (or more) authors of
books
• 30 judges
• 14 presidents of
universities
• 3 U.S. congressmen
• 1 U.S. vice president
(Source - Unknown)
Anil S Awad
English NET/SET
Consultant
9922113364
(whatsapp)
9423403368 (BSNL)
