Here are fun facts about authors, gleaned form interestingliterature.com. I whittled it down from 100, and edited heavily: Virginia Woolf was the granddaughter of novelist William Makepeace Thackeray... Harriet Beecher Stowe lived next door to Mark Twain... Evelyn Waugh’s first wife’s name was Evelyn. They were known as He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn... In 1951 William Burroughs accidentally shot his common-law wife dead at a party... Jonathan Swift invented the name Vanessa... In 1974 Arthur C. Clarke predicted the internet... Stieg Larsson said that
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was based on what
Pippi Longstocking would be like as an adult... Thomas Hobbes, who famously described human life as "nasty, butish and short," lived to 91... Before becoming an author, Dashiell Hammett worked as a private detective; his first case was to track down a stolen Ferris wheel... Jean-Dominique Bauby "dictated"
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, about his life following a stroke, by blinking his left eyelid... Stella Gibbons wrote much of
Cold Comfort Farm while commuting on the London Underground... Friedrich von Schiller kept rotten apples in his desk, claiming the scent helped him write... When he worked for Faber, T. S. Eliot liked to seat visiting authors on whoopee cushions and offer them exploding cigars... Noel Coward claimed he began every day by checking the obituaries; if he wasn’t listed there, he could get down to work... Agatha Christie disliked her creation Hercule Poirot, calling him "a detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep."... Molière died after collapsing on stage while acting in one of his own plays – playing the role of a hypochondriac... On his marriage document in 1582, William Shakespeare’s name was spelled William
Shagspeare... Mickey Spillane ordered 50,000 copies of
Kiss Me, Deadly to be destroyed when the comma was left out of the title... The first U.S. edition of Ian Fleming’s
Casino Royale was published as
You Asked for It... Louis L’Amour received 200 rejections before he was published. His novels have sold 320 million copies worldwide... Katherine Mansfield wore mourning dress to her first wedding and left her husband on their wedding night... Eyesight failing, James Joyce wrote much of
Finnegans Wake in crayon on pieces of cardboard... J. R. R. Tolkien dressed as an axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon warrior and chased an astonished neighbor down the street... Truman Capote wouldn’t begin or end a piece of work on a Friday, and would change his hotel room if its phone number involved the number 13... When he was six, Roald Dahl asked his mom to take him to meet Beatrix Potter. Potter, who disliked children, told them to "buzz off."... J. K. Rowling came up with the names for the houses at Hogwarts while on a plane, jotting them down on a sick-bag... Dr Seuss included the word "contraceptive" in a draft of
Hop on Pop to make sure his publisher was paying attention... When staying in hotels, Hans Christian Andersen always carried a coil of rope with him in case he needed to escape from a fire... Only ten people attended D. H. Lawrence’s funeral. One was Aldous Huxley... In 1912 Ambrose Bierce proposed an emoticon, the snigger point, written as \___/!, designed to mimic a smiling mouth... Quentin Crisp’s real name was Denis Pratt... Jack Kerouac typed
On the Road on one continuous roll of paper 120 feet long... J. M. Barrie set up a celebrity cricket team featuring G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jerome K. Jerome, A. A. Milne and H. G. Wells... There is an asteroid named after Kurt Vonnegut... Marlon Brando was a huge fan of Toni Morrison; he would call her and read passages of her novels he particularly enjoyed... There is a life-size android version of Philip K. Dick, built in 2005 by David Hanson. It has been christened Robo-Dick... Sylvia Plath committed suicide in an apartment in which W. B. Yeats had lived...
I Dream of Jeannie was created by Sidney Sheldon, who went on to become the seventh bestselling fiction writer of all time.
According to an article in today's NY Post, half of every dollar spent online is at amazon.com.
I stood beside my car from eleven to one on this nasty day, hoping some of my regulars would pass and ask for books. I'm holding three that have already been paid for, and I'm owed a few bucks for others. Alas, none of those folks showed. Here's hoping the weather improves tomorrow.
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