Famous Authors – Interesting Literature

Five Fascinating Facts about William Gibson

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. William Gibson popularised the term ‘cyberspace’ in a short story of 1982.

Defined as ‘the notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs’, cyberspace first appeared in fiction in William Gibson’s 1982 story ‘Burning Chrome’ (no relation to Google Chrome, we’re told), a story about a couple of freelance hackers. (Before it was published, Gibson read this story out at a science fiction convention – to an audience of four people.)

12 Interesting Facts about French Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

French literature has often been one step ahead of the literary curve, to risk mixing our progressive metaphors. Before T. S. Eliot and other Anglophone poets had found a way to write about the modern city, Charles Baudelaire had already shown a way forward. In the realm of medieval romance, French writers and troubadours led the way. Gustave Flaubert influenced James Joyce, Henry James, and countless others. So, in this post, we thought we’d pay homage to French literature and Francophone writers by sharing a dozen of our favourite interesting facts about French writers and French literature.

The most popular novel among soldiers in the American Civil War was Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

Georges Perec wrote a novel, La disparition, without once using the letter ‘e’ (apart from four times on the title-page, presumably, when the author’s name is cited).

French philosopher and critic Roland Barthes was killed by a laundry van.

French writer Colette started her working day by picking the fleas off her cat and would write only on blue paper, by artificial light, in her bare feet.

Five Fascinating Facts about Samuel Pepys

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. Samuel Pepys’ celebrated diary was only deciphered in the early nineteenth century, over a century after his death.

The diary wasn’t written in code but in a form of shorthand called tachygraphy. It took a reverend several years to decipher the diary – and this wasn’t done until the 1820s. Partly what makes the diary so entertaining is Pepys’s personality: his confession of his own weaknesses, his refreshing frankness. But the diary is also the chronicle of a busy decade in English history.

It’s well-known that Pepys (1633-1703) documents the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Dutch invasion, but it’s often the little day-to-day details that make the diary so interesting. Among other things, Pepys’s diary contains one of the first references to a Punch and Judy show in England, and even the earliest known reference to someone in England having a cup of tea.

25 Interesting Facts about American Literature

Interesting trivia about American writers and their work

As it’s Independence Day, how about some facts about the great and the good from American literature, from Edgar Allan Poe to Toni Morrison? What follows is a compilation of our 25 favourite facts about American authors and their writing.

Edgar Allan Poe’s prose-poem Eureka predicts the Big Bang theory by some eighty years.

Marlon Brando was a huge fan of Toni Morrison; he would often call her up and read passages of her own novels which he particularly enjoyed.

Five Fascinating Facts about Arthur Miller

Interesting Arthur Miller trivia

1. Arthur Miller’s father lost virtually everything in the 1929 Wall Street crash. Miller’s play Death of a Salesman (1949) was informed by personal experience: in 1929, when Miller was still a boy, his father Isidore lost much of his fortune in the famous stock-market crash of 1929. His father had owned a women’s clothing business, a chauffeur, and a staff of some 400 people; they lost virtually everything.