Literature

We’ve Entered the UK Blog Awards 2014!

We’ve entered the UK Blog Awards 2014. You can vote for us here. It’s quick and easy to vote for us, and in return, you’ll receive a free blogging ebook from the UK Blog Awards folk, which is rather nice.

However, we wouldn’t ask you to vote for us and offer only a free ebook for your trouble. So, here are some more wonderfully interesting literary facts for you, which we hope will convince you to take the trouble to reach for the vote button…

Blog AwardsWhere the Wild Things Are was originally titled ‘Where the Wild Horses Are’, but Maurice Sendak changed his mind as he couldn’t draw horses.

Harper Lee’s friend gave her a year’s wages for Christmas, on condition that she give up work and write. She wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.

Dickens’s house at Gad’s Hill reportedly had a secret door in the form of a fake bookcase. The fake books included titles such as ‘The Life of a Cat’ in 9 volumes.

Emily Bronte’s dog, Keeper, followed her coffin to the grave when she died and, for weeks after, moaned and howled outside her bedroom door.

Edgar Allan Poe coined the word ‘tintinnabulation’ to describe the sound made by the ringing of bells.

An Italian translation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has the clocks striking ‘uno’ instead of thirteen because ‘Italian clocks don’t go up to thirteen’ (missing the joke somewhat).

In one of Jane Austen’s first stories, ‘The Beautiful Cassandra’, the heroine (based on Jane’s sister) shoplifts a hat and punches a cook.

The Latin translation of Winnie-the-Pooh, entitled Winnie ille Pu, is the only Latin book to have made the New York Times Bestseller List.

Before finding fame as a novelist, Dan Brown was a pop singer. One of his solo albums was called Angels and Demons.

The memorial plaque to Emily Dickinson in Amherst, Massachusetts, composed by the poet herself, features just two words: ‘called back’.

If you enjoyed any of those literary factoids, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could take a few moments to vote for us so we stand a chance of winning in the Arts and Culture section of the blog awards. To vote for us, simply click on this link to take you to our page on the UK Blog Awards website. And thank you!

29 Comments

  1. Pingback: Harper Lee’s friend gave her a year’s wages for Christmas, on condition that she give up work and write. She wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. | JME

  2. Just voted, with pleasure.

  3. Just submitted my vote! :-)

  4. Just signed in by the way and voted, congratulations! You people certainly deserve it.

  5. Glad to vote for you, Brenton. I really enjoy your blog.

  6. You got a well deserved vote from me. Good Luck!

  7. Congratulations and good luck! :)

  8. My pleasure to vote for you. By the way, I’ve never been to Dickens’ Gads Hill house, but Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Knebworth Hall has a secret passage behind a book case as well.

  9. Consider yourself voted for. Anyone who can appreciate Poe deserves an award :)

  10. Hiya have done this…as you probably know, many of these online contests allow multiple voting. I don’t know why this is so, but it is – usually voters are restricted, if that is the right expression, to one vote per day! Naturally this is worth knowing…

    Anyway good luck you have a great blog.

    Regards

    Steve

    • Cheers for this, Steve – I hadn’t considered multiple voting, but now you mention it I suppose that might be an issue. Hmm. Will have to do some research and see what I can find out! Thank you for voting!

  11. Reblogged this on Legends of Windemere and commented:
    Vote in the 2014 UK Blog Awards

  12. It was my pleasure to vote for you :) Good luck!

  13. Reblogged this on 1WriteWay and commented:
    Vote for Interesting Literature in the UK Blog Awards 2014! You’ll have to create an account with UK Blog Awards but you’ll get a free ebook and the satisfaction of voting for one of the most interesting blogs you may ever read :)