Fun Facts – Interesting Literature

Five Fascinating Facts about Aldous Huxley

Interesting trivia about the life of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World

1. Aldous Huxley was the great-nephew of Matthew Arnold. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the author best known for the dystopian novel Brave New World (1932), could boast the nineteenth-century poet and educational reformer Arnold (1822-88) as his great-uncle. This literary ancestry is worth mentioning at the outset of this list of interesting Aldous Huxley facts, not least because it is often eclipsed in accounts of Huxley’s life by his more famous family connection – namely, his grandfather, the great Victorian biologist T. H. Huxley, who coined the word ‘agnostic’. And while we’re discussing the coining of words…

Five Fascinating Facts about Herman Melville

Five fun and interesting facts about Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick

1. Much of his mature work was a flop during his lifetime. Much of Melville’s later work – the majority of which is now his most highly regarded fiction – was neither critically nor commercially successful when it was first published. Between 1863 and 1887, an average of 23 copies of Moby-Dick – now his most widely read book – were sold each year. It now sells more copies each year than were sold in the entire nineteenth century and is acknowledged as a classic. (Of course, its influence can even be seen in the modern world of coffee and capitalism: the founders of the Starbucks chain took the name from a character in Melville’s novel.)

Five Fascinating Facts about Sylvia Plath

Five interesting facts about the poet Sylvia Plath

1. The first time Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes, she was so excited that she bit him on the face.

The two felt an inexplicable attraction to one another and almost immediately began biting each other’s faces off – literally. When they left the party at which they had met, Plath noticed that blood was running down Hughes’ face.

30 Interesting Facts about Books

30 fun facts about books, in honour of World Book Day 2015

If you enjoy these interesting book facts, we have hundreds more in our book, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History, which is available from Michael O’Mara Books.

SF writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is the only author to have published a book in nine out of the ten Dewey library categories.

When asked what book he’d like to have with him on a desert island, G. K. Chesterton replied, ‘Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.’

Hugh Lofting, author of Dr Doolittle, thought books should have a ‘senile’ category to complement the ‘juvenile’ section.

Five Fascinating Facts about Dr Seuss

Five fun facts about Dr Seuss – or Theodor Seuss Geisel, to give him his full name

1. His first book was rejected by over 20 publishers. Dr Seuss got the idea for his first work, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, from listening to the rhythmic sound of a ship’s engine. The book was reportedly rejected by anything between 20 and 43 publishers (the author’s own account of the number varied) before it was accepted for publication by Vanguard Press in 1937. His books have gone on to sell over half a billion copies worldwide, making him one of the biggest-selling children’s authors in the world.