Literary figures are no less than legit celebrities for bibliophiles. And to know something about them that has more to do with their personal lives is all the more exciting.
Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, was a financial disaster.
Despite paying his bills on time, he frequently overdrew up to $7,500.Â
Carroll was a mathematics scholar at Oxford, which makes this all the more ironic.
James Joyce was such a lover of Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen’s work that he learnt rudimentary Norwegian solely to write him a fan letter.
Joyce spoke French, Italian, Latin, and German in addition to Norwegian.
In his most challenging novel, Finnegan’s Wake, he even utilises vocabulary from more rare languages like Old English, Gaelic, Provençal, and Swahili.
Charles Dickens had obsessive-compulsive disorder, combed his hair 20 times a day, and would quickly change all of the furniture at hotels.
Ernest Hemingway was not only a fantastic writer; but also a professional bullfighter; he also created his own rum brand.
Fairies were a belief of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He spent $1 million advertising the Cottingley Fairy photographs, and in 1921, he published the book The Coming of the Fairies, which proved their veracity.
Salman Rushdie worked as a copywriter for Ogilvy & Mather before becoming a writer. He created several well-known ads, such as “naughty but nice” and “irresistibubble!”
By marriage, Virginia Woolf (author of To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, and A Room of One’s Own) and William Makepeace Thackeray (author of Vanity Fair) were related. Minie, William’s daughter, was Virginia’s father’s first wife.
While Sylvia Plath is most known for her works Ariel and The Bell Jar, she also wrote The Bed Book, a classic collection of children’s rhymes published after her death.
The book Kim by British author Rudyard Kipling literally saved the life of a French soldier. Maurice Hamonneau, a French Legionnaire soldier, was shot near Verdun in 1913. Fortunately for Hamonneau, the bullet impacted his copy of Kim in his left breast pocket, stopping the shot 20 pages from his heart. Talk about surviving through words!!
When inspiration knocked on J.K. Rowling’s door, she was prepared. Rowling got the names for the renowned Hogwarts houses while on a plane—and she jotted them down on a motion sickness bag!Â
Oscar Wilde loved fashion and interior design in addition to literature, and he had an unconventional drawing room with a blue ceiling with painted dragons and walls adorned with peacock feather plaster arrangements.
Read More-Â English Literature facts Every Aspiring Student must know
