This post is designed to celebrate the Brontë sisters and their work in another instalment of our Five Fascinating Facts series. If you enjoy this post, you might also want to see how you fare with our 10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read. 1. The sisters’ first volume of poems sold just two copies. Poems by … Read more
By Viola van de Sandt 1. He had no regrets. In a letter to fellow novelist Hugh Walpole, James wrote in 1913: ‘We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art . . . what we are talking about – &Â the only way to know it is to have lived & loved … Read more
What’s the longest ever word in literature? The longest word in the English language (leaving literature to one side for a moment) is a staggering 189,819 letters long. Or rather, it is and it isn’t. The chemical formula for the protein otherwise known as titin runs to 189,819 letters, but whether this constitutes a ‘word’ … Read more
By Viola van de Sandt 1. Jean Rhys got the idea for her famous novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) after reading a copy of Jane Eyre that her second husband had given to her as a birthday present. The first version of the novel was called Le Revenant, and Rhys burnt its manuscript after a … Read more
Curious Dickens trivia relating to his life and work
1. Dickens’s house had a secret door in the form of a fake bookcase. The fake books included titles such as ‘The Life of a Cat’ in 9 volumes.Â
This was at his home at Gad’s Hill, in Kent. He also reputedly had a series of fake titles called ‘The History of a Short Chancery Suit’ in 47 volumes (a reference to the very long Chancery case which inspired his novel, Bleak House).