1)
25 percent of all Americans
believe that Sherlock Holmes
was a real person.
2)
The bible is the most shoplifted
book in the world.
3)
20 percent of all publications
sold in Japan are comic books.
4)
English author, Charles
Dickens, always used to touch
things three times for luck.
5)
English writer William
Shakespeare has no living
descendants.
6)
Norwegian playwright Henrik
Ibsen had a pet scorpion which
he used to keep on his desk for
inspiration.
7)
British writer Charles Dickens
earned no more money from his
many books as he did from
doing lectures.
8)
British writer Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, the creator of Sherlock
Holmes, once played cricket for
the MCC and once bowled the
legendary W.C. Grace.
9)
British writer Charles Dickens
always slept towards the North
because he thought that it
would improve his writing.
10)
British playwright Samuel
Beckett's play "Breath" is the
shortest performed play ever
written. It last's for only 35
seconds and consists of human
breaths and cries.
11)
British writer Lewis Carroll,
author of "Alice In
Wonderland" wrote most of his
books standing up.
12)
In the 1631 publication of The
Bible, a printer accidentally
omitted the word "Not" from
the seventh commandment,
encouraging readers to commit
adultery.
13)
British writer Lord Archer used
to work as a deckchair
attendant when he was 18
years old, during the holiday
season in Weston-Super-Mare.
14)
The very first book about
plastic surgery was written in
1597.
15)
Russian writer Konstantin
Mikhailov used to have 325
pseudonyms.
16)
British writer Mary Shelly was
only 19 years old when she
wrote "Frankenstein".
17)
British writer Dr. Samuel
Johnson wrote the story
"Rasselas" in one week so he
could earn the money to pay for
his mother's funeral.
18)
Writer Baroness Orczy who
wrote "The Scarlet Pimpernel"
couldn't speak a word of
English until she was 15 years
old.
19)
British writer and poet Lord
Byron once had an affair with
his half sister and made her
pregnant.
20)
US writer Mark Twain's book
"The Adventures Of Tom
Sawyer" was the first novel to
be written on a typewriter.
21)
British poet Alfred Lord
Tennyson once had a pony
called Fanny which used to pull
his wife along in a wheelchair.
22)
French writer Marcel Proust
once had a pet swordfish.
23)
British poet Lord Byron owned
a pet bear while he was at
Cambridge University because
the rules said that dogs were
not allowed.
24)
Writer Margaret Mitchell, who
wrote the bestselling book
"Gone With The Wind" didn't
write any other books in her
lifetime.
25)
Iceland publishes more books
than any other country in the
world.
26)
British poet George Bernard
Shaw was 29 years old when he
lost his virginity to an elderly
widow. This event traumatised
him so much that he didn't
have sex for another 15 years.
27)
Scottish poet Robert Burns once
owned a pet ewe called Poor
Mallie which he wrote two
poems about.
28)
Writer D.H. Lawrence who was
well known for erotic novels
such as "Lady Chatterley's
Lover" was a prude in real life
and would only make love in
the dark.
29)
The glow from six firefly
insects provides enough light to
read a book.
30)
French writer Alexander Dumas
suffered terribly from
insomnia. So desperate was he
to get sleep that he once ate an
apple under the Arch De
Triomphe to help him sleep.
31)
Hans Christian Andersen was so
terrified of being killed in a
fire that he always carried a
piece of rope with him
wherever he went so that he
could escape any building that
was alight.
32)
The country with the largest
number of libraries and books
in the world is Russia.
33)
At one time not only were
Chinese books written back to
front but they also had the
footnotes printed at the top of
the page.
34)
During the Chinese Cultural
Revolution all literary works
by Charles Dickens and William
Shakespeare were banned.
35)
The very first crossword puzzle
to appear in a newspaper was
in the 'New York World' in
1913.
36)
English diarist Samuel Pepys
loved to play the recorder.
38)
English poet Ben Johnson had
his heel bone stolen by the
Dean of Westminster when his
grave was disturbed in 1849. It
later turned up again in a
junkshop in 1938.
38)
Charles Darwin who wrote the
book 'The origin of species'
which rocked the church, once
trained for holy orders himself.
39)
In North Carolina, USA, in 1980
a library forbade children to
read the Holy Bible without
parental consent.
40)
When the poet Rosetti's wife
died he decided to bury his
book of poems with her
Seven years later he changed
his mind and decided that he
wanted them back so he
arranged for the grave to be
opened, removed the book of
poems and had them
disinfected.
They were later published to
great acclaim.
41)
18th century English
playwright Richard Brinsley
Sheridan was such a
compulsive drinker that he
would drink eau-de-cologne.
42)
The largest book in the world is
7ft tall and 10ft across when
opened.
43)
During the French Revolution
the new French Constitution
was actually bound with the
tanned leather skin of a
guillotined aristocrat!
44)
Russian author Dostoyevsky
was a foot fetishist.
45)
Author Scott Fitzgerald was
also a foot fetishist.
46)
Author John Milton who wrote
the book 'Paradise Lost'
received just £10.00 for this
classic book during his entire
lifetime.
47)
Two out of every three women
in the world are illiterate.
48)
There is approximately one
library book for each and every
person on earth.
49)
Author Truman Capote would
only ever write on yellow
paper.
50)
William Prynne, the English
pamphleteer, had his ears cut
off because of his inflammatory
publications.
51)
Mathematicians in France
produced a 400 page book
showing the value of pi to one
million figures.
52)
In Bram Stoker's novel
"Dracula" the Count had a
moustache.
53)
The novelist Anthony Trollope
also invented the pillar box.
54)
Russia once banned all of the
Sherlock Holmes books because
of the great detective's belief
in spiritualism.
Fortunately they are now
available again.
55)
Jane Austen's book "Northanger
Abbey" was originally called
"Susan".
56)
The book "Catch 22" was
originally entitled "Catch 18".
57)
English author Charles Dickens
would work himself up so much
when he performed his own
works on stage that he
sometimes fainted.
58)
Mr. William Ireland once
forged a new version of "King
Lear" and various other
documents supposedly written
by Shakespeare.
He then wrote a story called
"Voltigern" which he claimed
was a lost Shakespearean play.
Many scholars examined the
documents and declared them
to be authentic but when it was
performed on stage it was so
terrible that it was booed off.
59)
In Shakespeare's play "Julius
Caesar" there is a reference to
a clock striking.
Clocks did not appear until at
least a thousand years after
Caesar's death.
60)
The 'New York Times' once
published an apology to a
professor 49 years after his
theories about travelling into
space, which they had scoffed
at, were proved to be correct.
61)
Sir Winston Churchill wrote his
book "The History of the
English Speaking Peoples"
when he was 82 years old.
62)
In 1975 Indian poet Sri
Chinmoy wrote 843 different
poems in a single day.
63)
In William Shakespeare's book
"The Winter's Tale" he writes
about a ship that has been
wrecked off the coast of
Bohemia.
Bohemia has never had a
coastline.
64)
Books that are made in the
present day only have a life
expectancy of about 100 years
because the sulphuric acid in
the wood pulp paper rots
rapidly.
65)
William Shakespeare's
signature is worth millions of
dollars. There are only seven
known specimens in the entire
world.
66)
There are more than 13,000
existing towns and cities in
Great Britain that can claim to
have been mentioned in the
Domesday Book.
67)
The very first daily newspaper
in England was "The Daily
Courant".
68)
The very first newspaper to use
a perfumed page was the
"Washington Daily News" in
1937.
69)
The very first issue of the
"Lady" magazine gave it's
readers detailed instructions
on how to take a bath properly.
Although being a woman's
magazine the article was
illustrated with pictures of a
man instead of a woman
because of decency.
70)
Karl Marx rarely took a bath
and suffered from boils most of
his life.
71)
English author Charles Dickens
drew most of his inspiration
from Victorian life in London.
This was mainly due to the fact
that he would walk as much as
20 miles a night around the
streets of London to cure his
insomnia.
72)
In Denmark, an author who
wrote a book criticising the
Swedes, who were at that time
occupying his country, was
arrested and then given the
choice of either being beheaded
or of eating his own words.
He opted to eat his own words
by boiling his book in broth
and making a soup out of it.
73)
In England in 1272 AD the cost
of a Holy Bible in nine
handwritten volumes cost about
£33.00.
74)
All the following famous novels
were originally rejected by
publishers.
a) The Time Machine (H.G.
Wells)
b) The Mysterious Affair At
Styles (Agatha Christie)
c) Harry Potter And The
Philosopher's Stone (J.K.
Rowling)
d) The Razor's Edge (W.
Somerset Maugham)
e) The Good Earth (Pearl Buck)
f) The Picture Of Dorian Gray
(Oscar Wilde)
g) Moby Dick (Herman
Melville)
h) The Naked And The Dead
(Norman Mailer)
i) Northanger Abbey (Jane
Austen)
j) Barchester Towers (Anthony
Trollope)
k) The Ginger Man (J.P.
Donleavy)
l) Catch - 22 (Joseph Heller)
m) The Wind In The Willows
(Kenneth Grahame)
n) A Time To Kill (John
Grisham)
o) The Rainbow (D.H.
Lawrence)
p) The Spy Who Came In From
The Cold (John Le Carre)
q) Animal Farm (George
Orwell)
r) Tess of the D'Urbervilles
(Thomas Hardy)
s) Lord Of The Flies (William
Golding)
75)
The following famous books
and their 'original' titles.
a) Lady Chatterley's Lover
(D.H. Lawrence) - "Tenderness"
b) Roots (Alex Haley) - "Before
This Anger"
c) The Postman Always Rings
Twice (James M. Cain) - "Bar-B-
Q"
d) The Mill On The Floss
(George Eliot) - "Sister Maggie"
e) Portnoy's Complaint (Philip
Roth) - "A Jewish Patient
Begins His Analysis"
f) East Of Eden (John
Steinbeck) - "The Salinas
Valley"
g) The Time Machine (H.G.
Wells) - "The Chronic
Argonauts"
h) Valley Of The Dolls
(Jacqueline Susann) - "They
Don't Build Statues To
Businessmen"
i) Catch - 22 (Joseph Heller) -
"Catch - 18"
j) Treasure Island (Robert
Louis Stevenson) - "The Sea-
Cook"
k) Jaws (Peter Benchley) - "The
Summer Of The Shark"
l) War And Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
- "All's Well That Ends Well"
m) Moby Dick (Herman
Melville) - "The Whale"
n) Of Mice And Men (John
Steinbeck) - "Something That
Happened"
o) The Great Gatsby (F. Scott
Fitzgerald) - "The High
Bouncing Lover"
p) Gone With The Wind
(Margaret Mitchell) - "Ba! Ba!
Black Sheep"
q) Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
- "Prometheus Unchained"
76)
British author Dame Barbara
Cartland is related to King
Robert the Bruce of Scotland.
77)
Author Dick Francis served as a
pilot officer in the RAF during
World War II and flew
Lancaster Bombers and
Wellingtons.
78)
British author Jackie Collins
was once expelled from school
after being caught smoking.
79)
British author J.K. Rowling
worked at the Amnesty
International Office in London
and the Manchester Chamber
Of Commerce before becoming
famous.

posted from Bloggeroid