The Secret Library – Page 45 – Interesting Literature

The Argonautica – The Forgotten Classical Epic Poem That Changed Literature

In his latest Dispatches from the Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers Apollonius of Rhodes’ classic tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece

In the world of classical Greek epic poetry, two poems are universally renowned: The Iliad and The Odyssey. Both, of course, are attributed to Homer – whoever he may have been. But there is another classical epic poem, written a few centuries later, which has been largely forgotten – although the story it tells is one of the most celebrated tales from Greek mythology.

Dr John Dollar: The First Criminal Psychologist in Fiction

In this week’s Dispatches from the Secret Library column, Dr Oliver Tearle considers E. W. Hornung’s forgotten ‘crime doctor’, John Dollar.

Dr John Dollar is a fictional detective with a difference. He is, as one of the characters in The Crime Doctor puts it, ‘a medical expert in criminology’. He is the forerunner to the fictional criminal psychologists we see in modern police procedural television dramas, probably most famously Cracker, the ITV drama created by Jimmy McGovern and starring Robbie Coltrane as Dr Edward ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, a criminal psychologist who helps the Manchester police to investigate crimes.

Who Wrote the First Novel in English? And Other Surprising Literary Firsts

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

We recently wrote a book, The Secret Library: A Book Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History, which aims to uncover the best hidden facts and stories about classic and not-so-classic works of literature. One of the most fascinating things we discovered was how wrong we’d been on the topic of ‘firsts’. It seems there are a fair few origin myths out there, which are often taken as fact.

10 Forgotten Books and Their Surprising Claims to Fame

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Our founder and chief librarian, Oliver Tearle, has written the following article on forgotten but noteworthy books, to mark the UK publication of his book, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History. The book is a whistle-stop tour of 3,000 years of Western history and is crammed full of the most surprising and fascinating facts he’s uncovered over the last four years since he founded Interesting Literature. If you want to learn about what the ancient Greeks laughed at, or like the idea of Tudor tales about talking cats, read on. The article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.