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Fictional justice
What would happen to the villains of children’s literature nowadays if the Crown Prosecution Service were able to make the mud stick? The Times consulted the Ministry of Justice…
Did Shakespeare really retire to Stratford?
Shakespeare abandoned London and retired to Stratford in about 1610. That’s what historians and Shakespeare experts have been telling us for 300 years. But is it true? Writing in theTimes Literary Supplement, the Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones suggests that it is not. In a dramatic overturning of received wisdom about the Bard, she supplies evidence that he may have remained in London long after 1610 – and didn’t retire to Stratford until shortly before he died.
Literary maps
In his book Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, Peter Turchi argues that the relationship between literature and map-making has been unfairly overlooked, and that it may offer scholars a new lens for literary analysis.
Nabokov's butterflies
Three Hemingway letters
According to The Independent article, 'The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 2, 1923-25, review' there are "6,000 or so of Ernest Hemingway's surviving letters, addressed to more than 1,900 recipients and running to nearly three million words" which would eventually fill at least 17 volumes.The origin of Mark Twain’s name
Before “Mark Twain” he was “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass”. And before “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass” he was “Sieur Louis de Conte”, “John Snook” and even “Josh”. Samuel Clemens, America’s classic satirist, used a litany of pseudonyms before settling on the name we know him by today. In the latest issue of the Mark Twain Journal Kevin MacDonnell reveals how and when Samuel Clemens decided conclusively to adopt Mark Twain as his pen name.
Bestsellers that nearly weren’t
Flavorwire identifies famous books originally rejected by publishers. Here are four:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita is one of the best-selling novels of all time, with over 50 million copies sold since its debut in 1955. When Nabokov was trying to publish it, many publishers worried they would be tried for obscenity. One editor told Nabokov: “It is overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian. To the public, it will be revolting. It will not sell, and will do immeasurable harm to a growing reputation… I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.”
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