Life

Seven Surprising Works by Famous Writers

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What on earth was he doing writing that? In this post, we explore seven books written by authors more famous for penning other sorts of literary works. These works might be considered the anomaly among these writers’ oeuvres, though sometimes a connection can be glimpsed between the unusual text described and the character of its author. … Read more

Five Fascinating Facts about Douglas Adams

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1. One of Douglas Adams’s early jobs was as a bodyguard to a Qatari family of oil tycoons. He also had a job cleaning a chicken-shed at one point. The ‘eureka moment’ for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy came when he lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria in the early 1970s. At the time he was … Read more

Guest Blog: Five Nineteenth-Century Inmates of Insane Asylums

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By Suzanne Shumway 1. Mary Lamb (1764-1847), sister of the essayist, poet, and playwright Charles Lamb. In 1796, Charles checked himself into a private asylum and spent six weeks there, never dreaming that a few months later, his sister would fall victim to a madness so severe that she would kill her own mother in … Read more

Five Fascinating Facts about Children’s Literature

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We’ve often posted about children’s literature and the fascinating facts behind some of the most popular children’s authors, such as Lewis Carroll and Charles Kingsley. Now, as part of our Five Fascinating Facts series, we’d like to offer you five of the most interesting things about all of children’s literature.

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