By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Somerset Maugham’s short story ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ (1924) reinterprets a classic fable through the lens of two brothers, George and Tom. Unlike the fable’s clear-cut division of industriousness and idleness, George (the ‘ant’) works diligently but lacks joy, while Tom (the ‘grasshopper’) lives carefree and spends lavishly.
Who first said this famous quip about everyone having a book or novel in them?
‘Everyone has a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.’ Or, as some sources have it, ‘Everyone has a novel in them.’ Still others: ‘Every journalist has a novel in him.’ Most of us have heard the line, or some variation on it, and understand what it’s saying: it’s challenging the age-old belief that everyone has a story to tell, by suggesting that a) not all stories are actually worth telling, and b) not everyone can tell their story very well. So much for the main thrust of the quotation; but its authorship is not such an easy thing to determine. Who actually came up with it?