Writing – Page 4 – Interesting Literature

Top Writing Resources to Enhance Your Writing Creativity

By Kate Funk

When writing creative content, writers need to have inspiration. What makes creative writing different from other forms of writing is that it requires a certain level of creativity and dexterity. From newbie to highly proficient writers, many would use various creative writing tools to come up with quality work. The Internet is home to a wide array of tools for this purpose. By effectively using these tools, it makes creative writing much easier and much more fun. So, what are some of the best tools that are specifically designed to unleash your writing creativity?

10 Weird Literary Phobias and Manias for Book-Lovers

Unusual words about literature every book-lover needs to know

Previously we’ve considered some essential words book-lovers should know; one of the book-words we coined, bibliosmia, has even found its way into other corners of the internet, albeit in a small way. (See also this Amazon discussion about the word and the phenomenon it describes; it also appears to have become a semi-popular hashtag on picture-sharing sites.) Since we came up with ‘bibliosmia’, anyway, we’ve uncovered lots of other weird and wonderful words relating to writing, reading, and other book-related activities and experiences. Here are ten of our favourites.

Alogotransiphobia denotes the fear of being caught on public transport with nothing to read.

Five Fascinating Facts about T. H. Huxley

The life of Victorian scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, told in five great pieces of trivia

1. He was known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ for good reason. The most famous moment of Huxley’s career was a debate about evolution that took place at the University of Oxford in 1860. Although others took part in the debate, it has gone down in history as essentially a clash between the pro-evolution Huxley and the anti-evolution Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (who was known as ‘Soapy Sam’ after a comment made by Benjamin Disraeli that the Bishop’s manner was ‘unctuous’). Interestingly, Huxley almost never took part in the debate: he had planned to leave Oxford the day before it took place. Then, a chance meeting with Robert Chambers – who had written an early book on evolution, fifteen years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published – convinced him to stay in Oxford for the debate. Thanks to this tough-minded championing of Darwin’s work Huxley was given the name ‘Darwin’s bulldog’.

Five Books That Are Great Introductions to Studying English Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

In a previous post, we offered our pick of ten great books about literature, some of the very best books we’ve read in the course of our research for this blog. Now, we’ve narrowed this down to a more specific topic: those books which serve as great short introductions to the study of English Literature.

Five Fascinating Facts about Nathaniel Hawthorne

Fun facts from the life of the great nineteenth-century American writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the judges at the Salem witch trials. Nathaniel added the ‘w’ to his family name in an attempt to distance himself from this controversial ancestry. The young Hathorne – later rechristened ‘Hawthorne’ – spent several childhood years living in Salem, Massachusetts, though his mother also lived in Maine as well. (Nathaniel’s father had died when his son was just aged four in the Dutch colony of Suriname.) Alongside Hathorne was one Andrew Elliott, ancestor of the poet T. S. Eliot.