The Advent Calendar of Literature: Day 3

Over the last couple of days, we’ve looked at the connections between literature and the Christmas card. The seasonal greetings card isn’t a genre that is renowned for its great literature, but there is at least one poet who contributed something truly poetic to the form. Today’s pick of our Christmas literary facts concerns this … Read more

The Advent Calendar of Literature: Day 2

As we saw in yesterday’s Christmas literature post, the first commercially available Christmas cards were sent in 1843, the same year as Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was published. In that post we also revealed the humorous origins of the robin redbreast on the front of Christmas cards. Now, presumably quite soon after Christmas cards appeared … Read more

The Advent Calendar of Literature: Day 1

We’ve been running this blog now for two years. When we posted our first literary blog post, on 1 December 2012, we set out to publish a short post every day, or almost every day. To mark the second birthday of Interesting Literature, we would like to present ‘The Advent Calendar of Literature’. Every day … Read more

Twelve Literary Facts about Christmas

Since the festive season is almost upon us, we’ve gathered together the twelve most interesting literature-related facts about Christmas that we could find. So here they are, ‘The Twelve Facts of Christmas’ … with a literary link. We hope you like them. 1. Christina Rossetti wrote the words to the Christmas carol ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’. Rossetti (1830-94) … Read more