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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]