Today, 23 April, is World Book Night (sometimes known, confusingly, as World Book Day). It is also the birthday (according to convention; nobody knows for sure) of William Shakespeare, and also the date on which he died, in 1616. On different calendars, Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) and […]
Literature
Guest Blog: Keats and Stoicism
By Laura Inman John Keats lived for twenty-five years, from 1795 to 1821. He is considered one of the great Romantic poets, along with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley. Unlike those other poets of his era, most notably in contrast with Byron and Shelly, Keats was a middle-class commoner, whose […]
20 Quotes about Life, Love, and Death
What follows are 20 of our favourite quotes about just about everything under the sun. By turns witty, poignant, and hilarious, they are always nothing short of eloquent. We hope you enjoy these quotes (or ‘quotations’, if you’re a purist!). Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It […]
Surprising Facts about Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was once described as the last person to have read everything, so steeped in literature, philosophy, and learning was he. Certainly, he gave us a very useful phrase concerning good fiction: the expression ‘suspension of disbelief’ is a coinage of his, and describes the unofficial contract we all enter into […]
In Celebration of Thomas Paine
We at Interesting Literature felt it was about time we saluted a truly modern man, Thomas Paine (1737-1809). A story from the 1960s shows just how inflammatory this champion of freedom, equality, and independence still is, even in more recent times. In 1964 the mayor of Thetford in Norfolk (Paine’s hometown) […]