Interesting facts about the Lew Wallace book Ben-Hur, and its subsequent life on film 1. It was the bestselling American novel of the nineteenth century. Lew Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur (1880) even outsold that other runaway bestseller, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). And this was despite slow sales: in the first seven months it […]
100 fun facts about writers and their fascinating lives On Twitter we recently reached the 100,000 followers milestone. (Hurrah! And do follow us @InterestingLit if you’re also a tweeter.) To celebrate the occasion, we’ve gathered together one hundred of our favourite facts about famous authors. We hope you enjoy them! Where […]
Interesting facts from the life of Agatha Christie (1890-1976), prolific author of detective novels As it’s Agatha Christie’s birthday today – she was born 15 September 1890 – we felt it was time we honoured one of the most popular novelists who has ever lived. So here are five great […]
Quick facts from the life of Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange 1. His most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, may have been partly inspired by a dark event in Burgess’ past, shortly after he and his first wife married. For this classic novel, Burgess invented an entire new language, Nadsat (the […]
Interesting facts about literacy and reading in honour of International Literacy Day In honour of International Literacy Day on 8 September, we’ve put together fifteen of our favourite facts about literacy and reading. Some are funny, some are surprising, and some are shocking; but all, we hope, are interesting in […]