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. This was at his home at Gad’s Hill, in Kent. He also reputedly had […]
1. James Joyce was born in the same year as another notable modernist writer, Virginia Woolf. But the similarities don’t end there. Both were born in 1882, but both writers also died in the same year, 1941. Both wrote landmark modernist novels, published in the 1920s, whose principal action takes place over […]
By Viola van de Sandt Edith Wharton’s most famous novels – among them The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920) – have earned her a steadfast place within the modern-day canon of American literature. Yet some of the most interesting and provocative instances […]
The man who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was born today in 1832. In honour of this, here’s another instalment in our new ‘Five Fascinating Facts’ series, this time all about Lewis Carroll. 1. There is an interesting link between Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Specifically, the title […]
By Viola van de Sandt More than seventy years after her death, Virginia Woolf continues to be a source of inspiration, analysis, interest, and admiration. Emphasis on a small number of famous events in her lifetime has turned her into a mythological figure that, at times, may have little resemblance […]