1) Jane Austen was jealous of Sir Walter Scott...
In July
1814, when Sir Walter Scott’s first novel Waverly was published, Jane Austen
was a bit jealous. She wrote the following in a letter to her niece:
“Walter
Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones.—It is not fair.—He
has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of
other people’s mouths.—I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverly if I
can help it—but fear I must.”
Ironically,
today Jane Austen is a much more popular author than her contemporary Sir
Walter Scott.
2) The Canterbury Tales is the most expensive book of all -
The
original copies of Canterbury Tales were printed in 1477 by William Caxton, the
first printer to introduce the printing press in England. Only one of these
first copies is still in private hands and was sold in an auction on July 8,
1998, for £4,621,500, making it the most expensive book ever sold. The news of an original copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
made it to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1998.
3) Chaucer’s Monk was really guilty of gluttony –
Chaucer’s Monk in the Canterbury Tales was described in the Prologue as “alord ful fat and in good point” (line 200). A new study finds that Chaucer’sdescription of the Monk as a person who loves to eat and is overweight inaccurate. A 2004 study by archaeologists at University College London found that monks during medieval days were actually gluttons. Archaeologists studied one hundred monk skeletons at 3 abbeys dating from the medieval period. The bones were thick; joint problems from obesity were evident; and there were signs of arthritis—all of these proved that monks were actually overweight, as portrayed in paintings and literature of medieval times. Another study estimates that some monks consumed about 6,000 calories a day. Eating was a physical pleasure monks could enjoy!
4) Poets' Corner
Chaucer was the first
poet to be buried in Westminster Abbey—initiating the Poets’ Corner. Today there
are 29 poets buried and 55 poets commemorated in the Poets’ Corner.
5) Daniel Defoe
or Foe
The famous
author of Robinson Crusoe changed his name in 1703 from Foe to Defoe. He
believed that Defoe is “more socially and upward sounding” than is.
6) Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol -
His most famous
story, A Christmas Carol, became more popular than his other classes, such as
Oliver Twist, though it received less attention from literary critics than some
of the other Dickens novels. Dickens, at age 31, wrote the short novel in 6
weeks and rushed it to be published before Christmas. The book was out December
19, 1843—the same year that the first Christmas cardon record was sent (go to
Christmas, scroll down to “Christmas Cards”)
Christmas Carol
was Dickens’s first unserialized work. Most of the characters were based on
people he knew personally, including Ebenezer Scrooge—based on Ebenezer
Scroggie, a counsellor at Edinburgh. Within its first year of publication, A
Christmas Carol sold 15,000 copies and inspired the production of about 10 stage
dramas.
7) Benjamin
Franklin and his Achievements
Writer,
politician, and scientist, Benjamin Franklin’s accomplishments were numerous. His
great literary works are Poor Richard’s Almanack, Father Abraham's Sermon or
The Way to Wealth, and Autobiography. Besides his literary and political
accomplishments, the following are several more of his achievements:
• He proved that
lightning is electricity.
• He invented
the lightning rod.
• He invented a
special cast iron stove—the Franklin stove.
• He invented a
special rocking chair.
• He invented a
carriage odometer.
• He discovered
the gulf stream or ocean current.
• He invented
the bifocals, which cost 1785 around $100, just about how much they cost
today.
• He invented a
glass harmonica.
• He founded a fire
department.
• He founded the
first lending public library (with a book lending system similar to our modern
public libraries’ system).
• He founded the
first fire insurance company.
• He helped to
open a hospital.
• He helped to
create the first efficient postal system in America.
• He helped
found the University of Pennsylvania.
Proverbs
Franklin was
famous for his proverbs, mostly published in Poor Richard’s Almanack. The
following are a few of his proverbs:
• To find out a
girl’s faults, praise her to her girlfriends.
• If Jack is in
love, he is no judge of Jill’s beauty.
• Kill no more
pigeons than you can eat.
• To lengthen
thy life, lessen thy meals.
• Plough deep
while sluggards sleep.
• Having been
poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it is.
• Genius without
education is like silver in the mine.
• A countryman
between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
• Never confuse
motion with action.
• Whatever is
begun in anger ends in shame.
• If you would
persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
• Any fool can
criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.
Epitaph
At age 22, while
working as a printer, Benjamin Franklin wrote the following epitaph for his
grave:
“The body of
Benjamin Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book, itscontents torn out
and stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food forworms; but the
work shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear oncemore in a new
and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.He was born Jan.
6. 1706. Died 17—.”
Many years
later, he changed his mind. Today the following inscription is on his grave:
“Benjamin and Deborah Franklin: 1790.”
8) Nathaniel
Hawthorne – Reunited with his wife after 140 Years
In 2006, after 142 years of separation, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia were finally reunited—or at least their body remains were. Hawthorne died in 1864 and was buried in the Author’s Ridge at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts (along with Concord’s finest Romantic writers: Thoreau, Alcott, and Emerson). However, Sophia, who outlived her husband by seven years, died while living in London, and so did their daughter Una. Hawthorne’s great-grandchild 93-year old Joan Deming Ensor consented that the bones of Hawthorne’s wife and daughter be brought from England to Concord and buried with Hawthorne. A ceremony took place on June 26, 2006.
9) Immanuel Kant
- A Philosopher
One of the
greatest Enlightenment philosophers, Immanuel Kant attempted to bring a
compromise between empiricism (John Locke) and rationalism (Rene Descartes and
others). His metaphysical philosophy was based on separating the noumenal (that
of itself—the true nonphysical reality of things) and the phenomena (physical)
worlds. His three most famous works are Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of
Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment.
A Peculiar,
Meticulous Man
Kant’s personal
life is known for its peculiarity and oddity. The following are a few fun facts
about Kant’s personal life:
• The farthest
he travelled from his birthplace (Königsberg, Germany) was 40 miles. He went
that far only because he had to travel with a family whom he was hired to
tutor its children.
• He was a
creature of discipline and habit. He took his walk every day at 3:00pm sharp. It
is said that people set their clocks and watches by their walk. Even on a rainy
day, his servant walked along with him to hold the umbrella. It is believed that
the only time he was late on his walk was the day he read Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education. His late walk on that day confused the town
people!
• He endeavoured
to be healthy. While outside in public, he tried to breathe through his nose and
not his mouth, to filter out germs. Sometimes he even did not respond to
greeters for fear of opening his mouth and breathing in a sickness.
• He was less
than 5 feet tall with a drooping left shoulder.
• He was very
slow and logical in making all his decisions. Twice he thought of marrying, but
the time it took him to weigh in all issues and reasons to make a decision was
too long. By the time made the decision to marry, he was too late: one woman
already married someone else, and the other was no longer Intown.
• He opposed
reading novels and expressed a dislike to folk music.
• Toward the end of his life, he used his reason, logic, meticulous calculations, and extensive studies of medical journals to calculate how long he would live. Toward the end of his life, he said, “Life is a burden to me; I am tired ofbearing it.” He would not commit suicide believing suicide to be morally wrong.
• His last words
were, “It is good!” He died on February 12, 1804.
10) John Keats
John Keats was
only about 5 feet tall—nevertheless, by the time he died at age 24, he was a
literary giant, surpassing any other 24-year-old English writer. We can only
wonder if Keats were to live to be an old man if his popularity today would exceed that of Shakespeare.
Height of other
British Romantic Authors:
William Blake: 5
feet
William
Wordsworth: 5 feet, 9 inches
Percy Shelley: 5
feet, 11 inches
11) Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow
Two years after
Lonfellow's wife’s death in a fire and while still grieving her death,
Longfellow received the news that his son Lieutenant Charles Appleton Longfellow was seriously injured fighting in the Battle of New Hope Church, Virginia, for
the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War. On Christmas Day in 1863,
saddened by the news, he heard the church bell ringing and was inspired to write
one of the most popular Christmas songs, “IHeard the Bells on Christmas Day.”
The following are four of its seven original stanzas.
I heard the
bells on Christmas Day
Their old
familiar carols play,
And wild and
sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on
earth, good-will to men!
Then from each
black accursed mouth
The cannon
thundered in the South,
And with the
sound
The carols
drowned
Of peace on
earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I
bowed my head;
"There is
no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate
is strong,
And mocks the
song
Of peace on
earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the
bells more loud and deep:
"God is not
dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall
fail,
The Right
prevail,
With peace on earth,
good-will to men!"
12) Christopher Marlowe - Assassination or Murder?
The story behind
Marlowe’s death at age 29 is controversial. According to traditional history,
Marlowe died in a brawl at a local tavern, stabbed to death by another man.
However, the fact that Marlowe was somewhat involved with some mysterious issue
with Queen Elizabeth makes the reason for his death to be a possible political
assassination. Therefore, his temper revealed in his last brawl that caused his
death might be just a cover-up of an unknown bigger reason for his death. For
more information on this topic, check out The World of Christopher Marlowe, by
the scholar David Riggs.
Where Would
Shakespeare Be without Marlowe?
Marlowe, a
Shakespeare contemporary, rose to fame in his twenties, before Shakespeare had
accomplished any notable work. Marlowe was a pioneer in composing blank verse (unrhymed poetry) and
using iambic pentameter for his two famous plays (Chamberlain and Dr Faustus).
Shakespeare, who rose to fame soon after Marlowe, copied Marlowe’s style in all
of his thirty-seven plays.
13) John Milton
John Milton
composed the greatest epic in the English language Paradise Lost after he was
blind (between 1658 and 1664). He claimed that he received nightly divine
inspiration, and during the day he composed his epic. ParadiseLost is packed
with biblical and mythological allusions—attesting to Milton’svast knowledge
and incredible memory.
14) Sir Isaac
Newton -The World Will End in 2060!
Sir Isaac Newton
wrote a letter in 1704 in which he predicted that the end of the world would be
in 2060. The father of modern science had an interest in unbiblical prophecy as
well. Newton came up with this prediction after a detailed study of various
biblical texts.
15) Sylvia Plath -Young Talent
Sylvia Plath,
who did not reach her 31st birthday, gained status among the greatest 20th-century American writers—as a children’s author, novelist, poet, and short
story writer. However, it seems today she is most famous for her depression,
emotional struggles, and suicide attempts.
Suicide
Her first
suicide attempt was during a summer when she was a college student at Smith
College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She swallowed sleeping pills under her
house.
Sylvia Plath and
Ted Hughes
Later she
married the English poet Ted Hughes (who in 1984 became the British Poet
Laureate until his death in 1998). She had two children and a miscarriage.
Losing an unborn child and dealing with an unfaithful husband did not help her
emotional instability. Sylvia and her husband separated; she became a single
mother dealing with sicknesses and lack of money. Just a few months after
separating from her husband and moving into an apartment with her two children,
on February 11, 1963, she committed suicide. While her children slept, she went
into the kitchen, shut the door, and sealed with towels any cracks. She then
turned the oven gas on and stuck her head deep into the oven.
16) Edgar Allan Poe - "The Raven"
“The Raven” is
Poe’s most famous poem. It was first published in the EveningMirror on January
29, 1845, and brought immediate fame to its author, but very little money.
The following is
the story behind “The Raven” as told in a lecture by the poet himself. Poe
explained how he came up with the idea for the poem through the following steps.
• Length: Poe
started with the goal of writing a 100-line poem, believing that poetry (or prose)
should not be too long that it could not be read in one sitting (the poem
ended up being 108 lines).
• Effect and
Tone: Poe wanted beauty to be its effect and melancholy to be its stone.
• Letters: Poe
thought of two letters that their sound he thought would fit the melancholy tone, the vowel /o/ and the consonant /r/.
• Word: Thinking
of a word that includes both letters,
• Poe chose the
word “nevermore” to be repeated in the poem.
• Character: Poe
wanted a nonhuman creature to repeat the word. His first choice of a parrot did
not fit his tone. He settled on a raven.
• Topic: Now
that Poe has the tone as melancholy, the word “nevermore,” and the character of the
raven, he chose the topic to be the death of a woman mourned by a young man.
• Setting: Poe
then established the setting: a beautiful room filled with memories of the dead
woman. The room will combine both the lover and the raven.
• Plot: Poe then
created the plot: late at night, a raven flies to a lit room of aweary students
doing school work late into the night and mourning the death of his love Lenore.
The raven, reminding the young scholar of Lenore refusing to leave the bust of
Pallas it perched on, added much to the scholar's distress.
17) Samuel Richardson –
Samuel
Richardson wrote the longest novel in the English language, Clarissa, or, the
History of a Young Lady — about 1 million words. He is known to be the first
English modern novelist and the first English writer whose main characters were women, not men. Clarissa was published in 1748. It is an epistolary
novel—composed entirely of letters written by the characters. These letters reveal the plot, conflict, characterization, and themes of the story. The storey is
of Clarissa and the young man Lovelace whose desperation to marry Clarissa and
not her sister compels him to abduct her hoping she’ll consent to marry him. It
is a story of love, abduction, rape, and revenge written in what many consider to be
endless, tedious letters.
18) Mary
Rowlandson -A Pioneer
Mary Rowlandson
established two important “firsts” in American literary history:
1. She was the first
American writer to establish a new indigenous American literary genre (the
captivity narrative).
2. She was the first
woman in America to have a bestseller. Her work ANarrative of the Captivity
and Restoration of Mrs Mary Rowlandson went through four editions within its first
year of publication in 1682.
Long Title
The full title of Rowlandson's captivity narrative is among the longest of literary works.
The image to the
right is the title page for the first publication in 1682.
The following is
the title she wrote for the second edition:
The sovereignty
and goodness of GOD, together with the faithfulness of his promises displayed,
being a narrative of the captivity and restoration of Mrs Mary Rowlandson,
commended by her, to all that desire to know the Lord'sdoings to, and dealings
with her. Especially to her dear children and relations. The second Addition was Corrected and amended. Written by her own hand for her private use, and now made
public at the earnest desire of some friends, and for the benefit of the afflicted.
Deut. 32.39. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no god with me, I kill
and I make alive, I wound and I heal, neither is there any can deliver out of my
hand.
Natives
Executing a Puritan Woman - History of Her Captivity
During the
1670s, in the New England area, tensions between Native Americans and European
settlers escalated resulting in King Philip’s War(1675-1676). Metacomet (known
to the settlers as King Philip), chief of the Wampanoag Indians united with
other native tribes in order to fight and protect their lands. On February 10,
1676, a Wampanoag party attacked Mary Rowlandson’s town, Lancaster,
Massachusetts (30 miles west of Boston). As a result, Mary was taken captive.
Her captivity narrative narrates her 20 removes(marching from one location to
another). These removes took her on a journey of 150 miles, until she was
ransomed for 20 pounds on May 2, 1676. She saw the death of her daughter and
other relatives and friends.
19) J.K. Rowling
- Harry
Harry Potter sold about 400 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 65 languages.
Though before
the book's popularity, Joanne Rowling had some difficulty finding a publisher
that believed her book could amount to anything. FinallyBloomsburry Press
agreed to publish the first edition of Harry Potter but only printed 500 copies
for the first edition for fear of them not selling. Also, the publisher requested
that the author would not use her first name (Joanne) but rather her initials to
make it less obvious that the author is a woman assuming that the book's main
audience young boys would not want to read a wizard book written by a woman.
Since Joanne Rowling did not have a middle name, she chose K for Kathleen.
Harry Potter,
First Edition
Those who bought
the first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone could make a
fortune today! Harry Potter's first edition copies are worth thousands.
• A hardback first
edition copy was sold for £10,575 at a Sotheby's auction in 2002.
• Another soft
cover first edition copy was sold at the Dallas Auction House for$19,120.
• In August
2005, AbeBooks.com sold a first edition for £20,000.
• Another
anonymous bidder paid $40,326 for a first edition at Christie’sauction house in
London.
20) William
Shakespeare
For 2004, the US
defence budgeted $1 million to bring productions of William Shakespeare’s Othello to several military bases.
All of
Shakespeare’s plays (Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies) were first published in a volume called First Folio in 1623 (seven years after his death). In 1685,
the Fourth Folio was printed. With fewer than 80 copies left today of the Fourth Folio, one copy was up for sale by Argosy Book Store, New York, a few years ago
for $185,000.
Go to Bible to learn about a possible subliminal message that Shakespeare inserted in the King James translation of the English Bible.
21) Edward
Taylor
Taylor is a
metaphysical lyricist whose greatest poems were forgotten and unknown to the
world for about 200 years. Taylor died in 1729; later his grandson Ezra Stiles,
president of Yale University, brought Taylor’s poetry to Yale University library
where they were forgotten until their discovery in 1937 by Thomas H. Johnson.
Today he is considered to be the greatest American metaphysical poet. His poetry
is full of farfetched and elaborate metaphors and similes, allusions, puns, and
paradoxes. His most famous are his Preparatory Meditations before My Approach to
the Lord's Supper, 217 poems written as a means to meditate to prepare him to
partake of the Lord’s Supper.
22) Alfred
Tennyson -Painting of Alfred Tennyson, by George Frederic
Alfred Tennyson,
1st Baron Tennyson, had a very early poetical talent. He wrote the following
about his early gift: “The first poetry that moved me wasmy own at five years
old. When I was eight, I remember making a line Ithought grander than Campbell,
or Byron, or Scott. I rolled it out, it was this:‘With slaughterous sons of
thunder rolled the flood’—great nonsense of course,but I thought it fine.”
23) Michel
Thaler - No Verbs!
Michel Thaler, a
French writer, published a 233-page novel without using any verbs. The novel is
Le Train de Nulle Part (The Nowhere Train). Thaler states that verbs are like
weeds among flowers; the weeds should be removed.
24) Henry David
Thoreau - Harvard Diploma Not Worth $5
When Thoreau
graduated from Harvard, he did think it was worth it to pay the$5 fee to
receive his diploma. He left without a diploma.
Last Words
Thoreau’s last
two words while on his deathbed were “moose” and “Indian.”The meaning and significance
of these two words are still not clear today.
At Walden Pond:
a statue of Thoreau and a replica of his Walden Pond cabin.
25) Mark Twain
Mark Twain was
the first notable American author who placed black and white Americans on the
same social rank—Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
“All modern
literature comes from one book by Mark Twain calledHuckleberry Finn. If you
read it, you must stop where Jim is stolen from theboys. That’s the real end.
The rest is just cheating.” Ernest Hemingway
Mark Twain’s
Sayings
• Honesty is the
best policy—when there is money in it.
• The serpent
should have been forbidden, not the apple—because they would have eaten the
serpent.
• Habit is not
to be thrown out of the window, but it is to be coaxed down the stairs, one step
at a time.
• I never smoke
more than one cigar–pause—at a time.
• Everyone is a
moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
• There are two
times in a man’s life when he should not speculate—when he can’t afford it and
when he can.
• The secret
source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow.
• Everything in
humans is pathetic.
• I have seen
slower and lazier people [than Mark Twain], but they were dead.
• Clothes make
the man; naked people have little or no influence in society.
• Don’t go to
sleep; so many people die there.
Thanks
26) Jonathan
Edwards - A Legacy
In Enfield,
Connecticut, in 1741, Jonathan Edwards authored and preachedAmerica’s most
famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He is atheologian, who
played perhaps the greatest role to bring the Great Awakeningto America. But
what kind of descendents did he and his wife Sarah Edwardsleave behind?
Steven J.
Lawson, in his book, The Legacy published by Multnomah Books,1998 (p. 13-14),
cites a study by New York state sociologists who tracedJonathan Edwards’s
legacy by tracing his male descendents. The following wasthe result of
Edwards’s male descendents, proving the influence two parentscan have on many
generations to come:
• 300 clergymen,
missionaries, or theological professors
• 120 college
professors
• 110 lawyers
• 60 (or more)
physicians
• 60 (or more)
authors of books
• 30 judges
• 14 presidents
of universities
• 3 U.S.
congressmen
• 1 U.S. vice
president
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