Regular readers of this blog may know that we at Interesting Literature are rather fond of the following story about the genesis of To Kill a Mockingbird. The story goes that Harper Lee’s friends gave her a year’s wages for Christmas, on condition that she give up work and write. By any standard […]
Literature
10 Great Quotes from Writers about Books
Here are ten of our favourite quotes about books, from those who should know them pretty well – writers themselves. The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. – Oscar Wilde Why can’t people just sit and read books and be […]
Five Fascinating Facts about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
In honour of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday (he was born on 22 May 1859 – fans of The Smiths may be interested to learn that this was exactly 100 years to the day before Morrissey’s birth), we’re here with five of our favourite fascinating facts about the man who […]
The Term ‘Stream of Consciousness’ and the Forgotten Modernist
‘Stream of consciousness’. You may have heard the term, but where did it come from, and what does it mean? The answers are perhaps surprising, and lead us to a forgotten modernist writer whom Virginia Woolf, among others, praised. It is often claimed that the term ‘stream of consciousness’ was […]
Classic Footage of Famous Writers – Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy
Did you know Mark Twain and Count Leo Tolstoy were captured on film? Although they’re associated with the nineteenth century, both writers lived until 1910 and would be filmed in their final years when the technology was still in its infancy. (Mark Twain, who had been born two weeks after Halley’s […]