Five Fascinating Facts about William Ernest Henley
The life of Victorian writer W. E. Henley, told through five quick interesting facts
1. William Ernest Henley was the inspiration for one of the most recognisable characters in Victorian fiction. Henley (1849-1903) was friends with Robert Louis Stevenson, and when Stevenson wrote his first novel, Treasure Island (1883), he was inspired by Henley’s distinctive appearance to create the famous fictional pirate. Henley, who had suffered from tuberculosis from an early age, had his left leg amputated below the knee while still a teenager. Stevenson wrote to Henley that it ‘was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John Silver … the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you.’ Henley, who by all accounts exuded a masculine strength and vigour (and had a large red beard and a hearty laugh – a sort of Victorian Brian Blessed, we might say), thus became immortalised as the one-legged Silver. Read the rest of this entry
The Best Sourced Dorothy Parker Quotes
10 of the best quotes from Dorothy Parker and where they first appeared
We’ve compiled a list of ten of the wittiest and wisest quotations from the Dorothy Parker oeuvre, as well as some of her pithiest and most memorable one-liners. Many quotations have been attributed to Parker, but here we’ve confined ourselves to the things that she definitely did say.
There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words. – Interview in Paris Review, 1956
I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more. – ‘The Little Hours’, 1939 Read the rest of this entry
10 Stunning Libraries from Around the World
Our previous post on this subject, 10 Amazing Pictures of Libraries, proved so popular that we decided to put together a sort of sequel to it. Here are ten more stunning pictures of libraries from various countries, each of which will give the bibliophile, bibliomane, and bibliosexual something to enjoy.
1. Merton College Library, Oxford, UK. Picture credit: Tom Murphy VII. Wikimedia Commons.
Jules Verne: Author or Fortune Teller?
By Spencer Blohm
Jules Verne is one of the most influential and celebrated writers in the history of science fiction. But his novels contain more than just entertainment. His wild imagination and propensity for thorough research led not only to enthralling adventure stories, but some eerily accurate predictions in the realm of scientific advancement.
In the 1870 classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Verne describes the Nautilus, an underwater vessel capable of traversing the ocean’s depths. A ship of this concept had never been seen by the protagonists of the novel, or by its readers at the time. While primitive submarines existed at the time, electric powered subs like the Nautilus wouldn’t come about until the early 1900s. Read the rest of this entry
Five Fascinating Facts about Sir Walter Scott
Five fun facts about the life and work of Scottish author Sir Walter Scott
1. The word ‘glamour’ is first found in his work. ‘Glamour’ is a Scottish corruption of ‘grammar’ (‘corruption’ is the linguistic term for when one word morphs into another), and was introduced into English literature by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Scott also coined the rather good phrase ‘book-bosomed’, denoting one who carries a book at all times. Read the rest of this entry
