Fun Facts Friday: Marcel Proust
Fun Facts Friday , Latest Posts / July 10, 2015

Adrian Proust, the author’s father and a noted doctor, was the first to write a book about his sickly son. Dr. Proust specialized in sicknesses which have no physical cause and couldn’t understand why his asthmatic son was always sick, despite smoking cigarettes to control his attacks.

Fun Facts Friday: Hermann Hesse
Fun Facts Friday , Latest Posts / July 3, 2015

Hermann Hesse (2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Swiss poet, author and painter. Hesse was a headstrong child, his mother wrote “The little fellow has a life in him, an unbelievable strength, a powerful will, and, for his four years of age, a truly astonishing mind.” Hermann Gundert, Hermann Hesse’s grandfather and a doctor of philosophy (as well as fluent in multiple languages), encouraged his grandson to read a lot, and even gave him access to his library. Hesse tried to work in a bookshop, but quite after 3 days. Hesse, Maria Bernoulli, was from a famous family of mathematicians. In World War I, Mr. Hesse Hesse volunteered with the Imperial army but was found unfit for combat duty. Instead he was assigned to care for POWs. Maria suffered from psychosis and after her recovery the couple separated. Hesse attempted to work against Hitler‘s suppression of art and literature that protested Nazi ideology. The Nazis eventually banned his work in their magazines. In 1946, Mr. Hesse received the Nobel Prize in Literature. The New York Times went so far as to claim that Hesse’s works were largely “inaccessible” for American readers. Hesse calculated that his average daily correspondence…

Fun Facts Friday: Salman Rushdie
Fun Facts Friday , Latest Posts / June 19, 2015

When The Satanic Verses came out several book stores in England and the US had bomb scares, two Islamic clerics were murdered for publicly questioning the fatwa and book burnings were held throughout the world.
Even the most astute PR firm could come up with such brilliant marketing.

Fun Facts Friday: L. Frank Baum
Fun Facts Friday , Latest Posts / May 15, 2015

Mr. Baum was an adamant supporter of women’s rights. His mother in law, Matilda Joslyn Gage, even wrote a book, History of Woman Suffrage (availble for free) with Susan B. Anthony, however it is said she did not like her son-in-law very much.

Fun Facts Friday: Robert Browning
Fun Facts Friday , Latest Posts / May 8, 2015

Robert Browning (8 May, 1812 – 12 December, 1889) was an English poet with a flair for the dramatic. Works by Robert Browning Browning was educated at home and lived many years under his parents’ roof while fostering a literary career. English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and playwright William Shakespeare were a major influence on Mr. Browning. When a collection of letters by Shelley was discovered, Browning wrote the preface. Later, it was discovered that the letters were fake and the collection never published; however, Browning’s preface remains an important piece due to its famous distinction between “objective” and “subjective” writers. Browning wrote poetry as dramatic monologues because his plays were poorly received and the drama was not suited for the theatre. Famous poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) was his wife. During her life, she was the more famous of the two. Even though Mr. Browning was a citizen of the British Empire, he spent almost a quarter of his life in Italy, which was a large influence of his work. Browning ’s poem The Ring and the Book is made out of 20,000 lines. Robert Browning died on the day…

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