Five fun facts about Victor Hugo, the celebrated author of Les Misérables 1. He had an unusual technique for dealing with writer’s block. While he was writing – or trying to write – Les Misérables, Victor Hugo found himself suffering from colygraphia (that’s our suggested technical word for ‘writer’s block’). So he […]
By Karen Langley 1. His matrilineal great grandfather was a black African page brought over to Russia as a slave. Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781) was kidnapped and taken to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great. Gannibal was educated in France to the profession of a military engineer, later progressing […]
In this special guest post, Harriet Devine from Shiny New Books looks at the author of children’s classic The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett… 1. Frances was born near Manchester, England. Her father was a successful ironmonger, but her family fell on hard times after his death when she was only three. […]
It’s World Cat Day! The purr-fect opportunity (sorry – we couldn’t resist) to share 10 of our favourite writer-related facts about cats. Ernest Hemingway had over 30 pet cats, with names including Alley Cat, Crazy Christian, Ecstasy, F. Puss, Fats, Furhouse, Skunk, Thruster, and Willy. Many of them had six […]
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway was published on this day, 14 May, in 1925. In honour of this, we thought we’d offer a few little facts about this novel, and about Woolf herself. The action of the book takes place over just one day – a ‘moment of June’ in 1923 – […]