English – Interesting Literature

The Interesting Literary Origins of ‘Selfie’, ‘Unfriended’, ‘Twerk’, and Other Modern Words

The true origins of some modern additions to the Oxford English Dictionary and other ‘new’ words

This post is a sort of sequel to our earlier post, about 10 seemingly modern words which actually have older, literary connections. In that post, we cast an eye over words such as ’email’ (actually found in print in the sixteenth century – with a different meaning, obviously!), ‘Google’ (found in 1907), ‘muggle’ (the thirteenth century), and others. Now, we’re looking at other modern words that aren’t so modern – even if they once had very different meanings from the ones we now associate with them.

10 Interesting Facts about Famous Writers at School

Fun facts about the schooldays of well-known authors and other literary types

September is the ‘back to school’ month, so to take the edge off that inevitable sinking feeling, we’ve put together ten great facts about the schooldays of famous writers. Some authors have been teachers, but all have been schoolchildren at some point. Here’s our pick of the best facts about writers at school. We’ve included a link on some authors’ names to previous interesting posts we’ve written about them.

Samuel Johnson had only three pupils enrol at the school he opened in his hometown of Lichfield in the 1730s. However, one of those three pupils was the actor David Garrick, who later followed Johnson to London to seek his fortune.

Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language defined the word ‘pedant’ as a ‘schoolmaster’. (More facts about Johnson’s Dictionary here.)

Five Fascinating Facts about Harper Lee

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. Harper Lee based the character of Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird on the boy who lived next door to her as a child. That boy was Truman Capote.

Harper Lee would later work as Truman Capote’s assistant on his novel In Cold Blood, and served as the model for one of the characters in Capote’s first novel, the 1948 work Other Voices, Other Rooms.

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 nice to each other? – … Read more