Facts about writers and poets. Interesting facts about writers and poets

Writers are people who write textual works that are intended for others to read. When we want to immerse ourselves in another Universe, we always turn to these very creations of writers. Their activities help us in many ways in life, teach us to be useful to society and mutual assistance.

Facts about writers

Any connoisseur of literature is familiar with. According to rumors, he was very loving, but at the same time plump and lame, but this did not stop him from luring women into his network.

Wasn't a child with happy childhood. His father was sent to debtor's prison, and the boy himself had to work to feed his family. He was hired at a waxing factory, where every day from morning to night he glued labels to cans. Many will say that the work is not dusty, what's wrong with that? Try doing this all day instead of the usual children's games and you will understand. That is why Dickens’s images of unhappy children came out perfectly.

We are all familiar with creativity. He was deathly afraid of the dark. Perhaps the reason for this was that future writer studied at the cemetery. The school was too poor, so the math teacher brought the children there, where the children chose a monument for themselves and calculated how many years a person had lived. Now the themes of Allan Poe's works are not so surprising.

He was a friend of the inventor, who was considered the most secretive person of his time. Twain even invented a couple of things.

He was addicted to drugs, and he also supported the ideas of terrorists. Perhaps it was because of him drug addiction, who knows?

There was a whole team of proofreaders working on it. The thing is that he had absolutely no spelling and punctuation knowledge. Since he wanted his works to be published in in good shape, he had to hire people to correct his mistakes.

In Great Britain, she is revered little less than the Queen. It is also called the symbol of the country. Its sales circulation is practically the highest, second only to Shakespeare.

He was so popular that towards the end of his life, loving readers sent letters with the address “Avenue V. Hugo”, although the street had a specific name. However, the parcel always found its addressee.

About Russian writers and poets

All that can be said about Russian writers and poets is that they are loved all over the world. Every connoisseur literary works says that Russian classics are a necessary foundation for any person.

Most popular poet Russia, was very ugly, which distinguishes him from his wife, Natalya Goncharova. He was ten centimeters shorter than her. That is why at balls Alexander Sergeevich tried to stay as far as possible from his beloved, so that such a contrast would not distract people too much.

When I was young, I spent a lot of time on gambling. Once he even lost his estate in Yasnaya Polyana. He wanted to buy her back, but for some reason he didn’t.

Helped pack things for evacuation. He tied her suitcase with a strong rope, joking that she could at least hang herself with it. It was on this that Tsvetaeva ended up hanging herself.

Gogol was partial to needlework. For the summer he even sewed scarves for himself, which he loved very much.

Several years before his death, he wrote that he would not be buried until his body began to decompose. They didn’t listen to him and buried him almost immediately. After digging up the body, they said that the skull was turned to one side. Another version says that the skull was missing. The writer was very afraid that he would be buried alive. Whether this happened or not, no one knows.

The only word he used to describe his homeland was the word “steal” when asked about Russia in another country.

Tolstoy had terrible handwriting. Only the writer’s wife, who rewrote his famous novel “War and Peace,” could understand him several times. He wrote quickly, so that his handwriting became illegible. Looking at the volume of his works, the theory seems real.

The most readable handwriting was his, for which he was thanked many times.

She had a sensitive sense of smell. Once he broke down the scent of a French perfumer into ingredients, to which the latter only sighed in disappointment, regretting that Kuprin was just a writer.

– a historian and philologist by training.

From the life of writers and poets

Writers are the same people; a lot of funny things happen in their lives:

As a joke, Sir chose twelve of the richest people in London, who had a reputation as honest and decent bankers, and wrote them notes saying that everything had come to light. The next day, every single banker left the city. This is how their criminal atrocities were revealed, and it was just a joke.

In his early years, Mark Twain worked as a journalist in Nevada. One day he went to billiard club, but bet one young man 50 cents that he would beat him in the game. The stranger said that he would play with his left hand, so he felt sorry for Twain, who played worse than ever. Mark decided to teach him a lesson, but still lost, giving away his money. He then said that he would like to see the guy play right hand, if he is so good with his left hand, to which the latter said that he is actually left-handed.

Pushkin was gambling, he had large debts. When time was running out, he amused himself by drawing caricatures of creditors in his notebooks. One day it came out and there was a huge scandal.

One day, three local university students caught up with us on the embankment of the Fontanka River. One of them said: “Look, a cloud is approaching,” hinting at the fatness of the fabulist. The latter did not remain in debt, saying that the toads were croaking.

Once I collided with a cyclist, both escaped with only a slight fright. When the guy started to apologize to the writer, he laughed and said:

“It’s good that you didn’t kill me, otherwise you would forever remain the one who killed Bernard Shaw.”

About children's writers

Children's writers are just a title. Adults often like to read their works. There's even a list best writers children's literature:

Hans Christian Andersen is one of the most famous storytellers in the world. However, he always believed that his works were for an adult audience. He didn't even like children. When they decided to erect a monument to him, he demanded that the figures of children not be anywhere near them.

The works are familiar to each of us. He changed many professions before becoming a writer. During the Great Patriotic War Dragunsky took part in the defense of Moscow.

- the person whose poems we learn first. His fairy tales are very firmly entrenched in the life of any person. Playing with children, he himself became a child. The children adored him for his simplicity of soul.

It is part of every person's childhood. She was a very determined woman: if she got something into her head, no doubt, she would achieve her goal.

The work of a writer takes a lot of effort and time. People who study literature in this vein are spiritually developed much better than others. Their talent instills in us a love of beauty.

Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov), industry (Karamzin), bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin), fade away (Dostoevsky), mediocrity (Severyanin), exhausted (Khlebnikov).

Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.

Voltaire ridiculed Duke Rohan for his arrogance. The Duke ordered his servants to beat Voltaire, which was done. Voltaire challenged the Duke to a duel, but the Duke refused because Voltaire was not a nobleman.

When starting to work on a new work, Balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and closed the shutters tightly so that no light could penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a robe, for 18 hours every day.

Mark Twain was born in 1835, when Halley's Comet flew close to the Earth. He predicted that he would die the next time she appeared. This is what happened in 1910.

Alexandre Dumas once took part in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: “I shot, but missed.”

The writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head facing north. He also sat facing north when writing his great works.

French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who was irritated by the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he dined at her restaurant every day, explaining that this was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen.

Beaumarchais, after performing his play The Marriage of Figaro, was arrested and imprisoned. Louis XVI, playing cards, wrote an arrest order on the seven of spades.

Jules Verne spent many hours a day studying scientific literature, writing down the facts that interest him on special cards. The card index he compiled could be the envy of the scientific community: it contained more than 20 thousand cards.

Hans Christian Andersen got angry when he was called a children's storyteller and said that he wrote fairy tales for both children and adults. For the same reason, he ordered that there should not be a single child on his monument, where the storyteller was originally supposed to be surrounded by children.

In 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."

American writer Emily Dickenson (1830-1886) wrote more than 900 poems during her life, only four of which were published during her lifetime.

Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that he real name— Kramer (Remarque in reverse). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews.

L.N. Tolstoy was anathematized. Once a year in all churches anathema was solemnly proclaimed to three persons: Mazepa, Grishka Otrepiev and Tolstoy.

The Belarusian poet Adam Mickiewicz was also a science fiction writer. In the novel “The History of the Future,” he wrote about acoustic devices with the help of which, sitting by the fireplace, you can listen to concerts from the city, as well as about mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets.

Jules Verne never visited Russia, but, nevertheless, the action of 9 of his novels takes place in Russia (in whole or in part).

The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking.

Lord Byron had four pet geese that followed him everywhere, even to social gatherings. Despite being overweight and having a fairly strong club foot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of its time.

Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who invented the plot of “The Count of Monte Cristo” and made a significant contribution to “ Three Musketeers».

The author of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, was sentenced to prison (in 1703) for a satirical article. He spent the day tied to pillory on the square. Those passing by were obliged to spit at him. Defoe was then forty-two years old.

The creator of the famous novel “The Gadfly,” Ethel Lilian Voynich, was a composer and considered her musical works even more significant than literary ones.

Famous Soviet writer and public figure Konstantin Simonov lisped, that is, did not pronounce the letters “r” and “l”. This happened in childhood when, while playing, he accidentally cut his tongue with a razor, and it became difficult for him to pronounce his name: Kirill. In 1934 he took the pseudonym Konstantin.

The expression “Balzac age” arose after the publication of Balzac’s novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is acceptable for women no older than 40 years.

Ilf and Petrov are very in an original way they avoided cliché thoughts - they discarded ideas that came to both of their minds at once.

One of the most prolific writers of all times was the Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to “Dog in the Manger,” he wrote another thousand eight hundred plays, all of them in verse. He never worked on a single play for more than three days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers.

The famous fabulist Aesop was so poor that he sold himself into slavery to pay off his debts. At that moment he was thirty years old.

Robinson Crusoe has a sequel. In it, Robinson again suffers a shipwreck and is forced to get to Europe through all of Russia. He waits out the winter in Tobolsk for eight months. The novel has not been published in Russia since 1935.

Of the American writers, the works of Edgar Allan Poe have been filmed the most - 114 times.

Once, at an official reception, Khrushchev called the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn Ivan Denisovich.

Chekhov sat down to write, dressed in full dress. Kuprin, on the contrary, loved to work completely naked.

Spanish playwright Antonio Silva was burned at the stake on October 19, 1739. On the same day, his play “The Death of Phaeton” was performed at the theater.

Writer Ernest Vincent Wright has a novel called Gadsby, which is over 50,000 words long. There is not a single letter E (the most common letter in the English language) in the entire novel.

Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of short stories called Absolute Emptiness. All the stories are united by the fact that they are reviews of non-existent books written by fictitious authors.

Brian Aldiss, an acquaintance of Agatha Christie, once spoke about her methods - “she finished the book before last chapter, then she chose the most unlikely of the suspects and, returning to the beginning, redid some points in order to frame him.”

Lewis Carroll loved to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called older ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman alone, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent.

When the writer Arkady Averchenko brought a story to one of the editorial offices during the First World War military theme, the censor deleted the phrase from it: “The sky was blue.” It turns out that from these words, enemy spies could guess that the matter was happening in the south.

The real name of the satirist writer Grigory Gorin was Ofshtein. When asked about the reason for choosing the pseudonym, Gorin replied that it was an abbreviation: “Grisha Ofshtein decided to change his nationality.”

If you read the works of writer Stephen King, you will notice that most of his stories take place in Maine. Paradoxically, this state has the lowest crime rate in the United States.

James Barrie created the character of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother.

Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”

After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga.

Daria Dontsova, whose father was Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Is White”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad mark, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev didn’t think about this at all!”

If only you knew what kind of rubbish... Very true words! Poems, stories and novels really sometimes grow out of such rubbish that people who are far from creative efforts even become scared. Gather unusual facts about writers is like picking mushrooms in the blind rainy season. Rip - I don’t want to! As a matter of fact, all the facts about writers in general are unusual, if not extraordinary. Judge for yourself.

001 William Shakespeare born and died on the same day (but, fortunately, on different years) - On April 23, 1564, he was born and 52 years later he died on the same day.

002 On the same day with Shakespeare another one died great writer — Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The author of Don Quixote died on April 23, 1616.

003 Contemporaries claimed that Shakespeare was fond of poaching - he hunted deer in the domain of Sir Thomas Lucy, without any permission from this very Lucy.

004 Great poet Byron he was lame, prone to obesity and extremely loving - in a year in Venice, according to some reports, he made 250 ladies happy with himself, lame and fat.

005 U Byron there was an amazing personal collection - strands of hair cut from the pubes of beloved women. The locks (or perhaps curls) were kept in envelopes on which the names of the hostesses were romantically inscribed. Some researchers argue that it was possible to admire (if this word is appropriate here) the poet’s collection back in the 1980s, after which traces of vegetation were lost.

006 And also great poet Byron loved spending time with boys, including, alas, minors. We don’t even comment on this! 250 ladies wasn’t enough for the scoundrel!

007 Well, a little more about Byron- He loved animals very much. Fortunately, not in the sense that you may have put into this phrase after reading about Byron a little higher. The romantic poet adored animals platonically and even kept a menagerie in which a badger, monkeys, horses, a parrot, a crocodile and many other animals lived.

008 U Charles Dickens I had a very difficult childhood. When his dad went to debtor's prison, little Charlie was sent to work... no, not in a chocolate factory, but in a blacking factory, where he stuck labels on jars from morning to evening. Not dusty, you say? But stick them from morning to evening instead of playing football with the boys, and you will understand why Dickens’ images of unfortunate orphans turned out to be so convincing.

009 In 1857 to Dickens came to visit Hans Christian Andersen. This is not a Kharms joke, this is life itself! Andersen and Dickens met back in 1847, were completely delighted with each other, and now, 10 years later, the Dane decided to take advantage of the invitation given to him. The trouble is that over the years in Dickens’s life everything has changed a lot and become more complicated - he was not ready to accept Andersen, and he lived with him for almost five weeks! “He doesn’t speak any languages ​​except his Danish, although there are suspicions that he doesn’t know that either,” Dickens told his friends about his guest in this way. Poor Andersen became the target of ridicule from the numerous descendants of the author of Little Dorrit, and when he left, Dad Dickens left a note in his room: “Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks, which seemed like years to our family.” And you also ask why Andersen wrote such sad fairy tales?

010 And also Dickens was fond of hypnosis, or, as they said then, mesmerism.

011 One of my favorite entertainments Dickens there were trips to the Paris morgue, where unidentified bodies were exhibited. Truly a dear person!

012 Oscar Wilde did not take Dickens's writings seriously and mocked them for any reason. In general, modern Charles Dickens critics endlessly hinted that he would never make the list of the best British writers. And we’ll get to Oscar Wilde later.

013 But Dickens ordinary readers were devotedly loved - in 1841, in the port of New York, where the continuation of the final chapters of “The Antiquities Shop” was to be brought, 6 thousand people gathered, and everyone shouted to the passengers of the docking ship: “Will little Nell die?”

014 Dickens could not work if the tables and chairs in his office were not arranged as they should be. Only he knew how to do it - and each time he began work by rearranging the furniture.

015 Charles Dickens He disliked monuments so much that in his will he strictly forbade him from erecting them. The only bronze statue of Dickens is in Philadelphia. By the way, the statue was initially rejected by the writer’s family.

016 American writer O.Henry began writing career in prison, where he ended up for embezzlement. And things went so well for him that everyone soon forgot about prison.

017 Ernest Hemingway He was not only an alcoholic and a suicide, as everyone knows. He also had peiraphobia (fear of public speaking), in addition, he never believed the praise of even his most sincere readers and admirers. I didn’t even believe my friends, and that’s all!

018 Hemingway survived five wars, four automobile and two air crashes. As a child, his mother also forced him to attend dance school. And over time he himself began to call himself Pope.

019 Same Hemingway often and willingly talked about the fact that the FBI was watching him. The interlocutors smiled wryly, but in the end it turned out that the Pope was right - declassified documents confirmed that this was indeed surveillance, and not paranoia.

020 First in history to use the word “gay” in literature Gertrude Stein- a lesbian writer who hated punctuation and gave the world the definition of “the lost generation.”

021 Oscar Wilde- as well as Ernest Hemingway— as a child, I spent a long time dressing up in girls’ dresses. In both cases, we note, it ended badly.

023 Honore de Balzac I loved coffee - I drank about 50 cups of strong Turkish coffee a day. If it was not possible to make coffee, the writer simply ground a handful of beans and chewed them with great pleasure.

024 Balzac believed that ejaculation is a waste of creative energy, since semen is a brain substance. Once, talking with a friend after a successful conversation, the writer exclaimed bitterly: “This morning I lost my novel!”

025 Edgar Alan Poe I've been afraid of the dark all my life. Perhaps one of the reasons for this fear was that as a child the future writer studied... in a cemetery. The school where the boy went was so poor that it was impossible to buy textbooks for the children. A resourceful math teacher taught classes in a nearby cemetery, among the graves. Each student chose tombstone and calculated how many years the deceased had lived by subtracting the date of birth from the date of death. It is not surprising that Poe grew up to become what he became - the founder of world horror literature.

026 The most psychedelic writer of all times should be recognized Lewis Carroll, the shy British mathematician who wrote the Alice stories. His writings were inspired by the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Tim Burton and others.

027 Real name Lewis Carroll- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He had the church rank of deacon, and also in personal diaries Carroll constantly repented of some sin. However, these pages were destroyed by the writer’s family so as not to discredit his image. Some researchers seriously believe that Carroll was Jack the Ripper, who, as we know, was never found.

028 Carroll suffered from swamp fever, cystitis, lumbago, eczema, furunculosis, arthritis, pleurisy, rheumatism, insomnia and a whole bunch of different diseases. In addition, he had an almost constant - and very severe - headache.

029 The author of “Alice” was a passionate fan technical progress, and he himself personally invented a tricycle, a mnemonic system for remembering names and dates, an electric pen, and it was he who came up with the idea of ​​​​writing the title of a book on the spine and created the prototype of everyone’s favorite game Scrabble.

030 Franz Kafka was the grandson of a kosher butcher and a strict vegetarian.

031 Great American Poet Walt Whitman adhered to a very specific sexual orientation. He admired, however, first of all Abraham Lincoln, whom he praised in the poem “Oh, captain!” My captain!". And once Whitman met another gay icon - the sarcastic Irishman Oscar Wilde, who so disliked Charles Dickens (who, in turn, did not like Andersen, see above). Wilde told Whitman that he adored Leaves of Grass, which his mother often read to him as a child, after which Whitman kissed the “excellent, large and handsome young man” right on the lips. “I can still feel Whitman’s kiss on my lips,” the author of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” shared with his friends. Brr!

032 Mark Twain - literary pseudonym a man named Samuel Langhorne Clemens. In addition, Twain also had the pseudonyms Tramp, Josh, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Sergeant Fathom and W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab. By the way, “Mark Twain” - a concept from the field of navigation, means “measure two” fathoms: this is how the minimum depth suitable for navigation was noted.

033 Mark Twain was friends with one of the most mysterious people of his time - the inventor Nikola Tesla. The writer himself patented several inventions, such as self-adjusting suspenders and a scrapbook with adhesive pages.

034 And also Twain he adored cats and hated children (he even wanted to erect a monument to King Herod). Once a great writer said: “If it were possible to cross a person with a cat, the human race would only benefit from this, but the cat breed would clearly worsen.”

035 Twain was a heavy smoker (he is the author of the phrase, which is now attributed to everyone: “There is nothing easier than quitting smoking. I know, I’ve done it a thousand times”). He started smoking when he was eight years old and smoked 20 to 40 cigars daily until his death. The writer chose the smelliest and cheapest cigars.

036 Author of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy J.R.R. Tolkien he was an extremely bad driver, snored so much that he had to spend the night in the bathroom so as not to disturb his wife’s sleep, and was also a terrible Francophobe - he hated the French since William the Conqueror.

037 On his wedding night with Sophia Bers, 34 years old Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy forced his 18-year-old newly married wife to read those pages in his diary, which described in detail the amorous adventures of the writer with different women, among others - with serf peasant women. Tolstoy wanted there to be no secrets between him and his wife.

038 Agatha Christie She suffered from dysgraphia, meaning she could practically not write by hand. All of her famous novels were dictated.

039 Chekhov was a big fan of going to a brothel - and? When I found myself in a foreign city, the first thing I did was study it from this side.

040 James Joyce More than anything else, he was afraid of dogs and thunderstorms, hated monuments and was a masochist.

041 When Tolstoy left home in old age most of reporters rushed after him, and only one, the most quick-witted Zhurka came to Yasnaya Polyana- find out how Sofia Andreevna is doing. Soon the editor received a telegram: “The Countess is running across the pond with a changed face.” This is how the reporter described Sofia Andreevna’s intention to drown herself. Subsequently, the phrase was picked up by two completely different writers - Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, presenting it to their brilliant hero Ostap Bender.

042 William Faulkner He worked as a postman for several years until it turned out that he often threw undelivered letters into the trash bin.

043 Jack London was a socialist, and in addition - the first American writer in history to earn a million dollars with his work.

044 Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented Sherlock Holmes, was an occultist and believed in the existence of small winged fairies.

045 Jean-Paul Sartre experimented with mind-expanding substances and supported terrorists in every possible way. Perhaps the first was somehow connected with the second.

You can find a huge amount of information about famous writers - how they lived, how they created their immortal works. We want to bring to your attention interesting and unusual facts from life. famous writers. Reading interesting book, the reader usually does not think about the peculiarities of the character and lifestyle of the writer who wrote it, but some facts of his biography or the history of the creation of a particular book are sometimes very entertaining and even cause a smile.

One day at Francois Rabelais there was no money to get from Lyon to Paris. Then he prepared three bags with the inscriptions “Poison for the King”, “Poison for the Queen” and “Poison for the Dauphin” and left them in a visible place in the hotel room. Upon learning of this, the hotel owner immediately reported to the authorities. Rabelais was captured and convoyed to the capital directly to King Francis I so that he could decide the writer’s fate. It turned out that the packages contained sugar, which Rabelais immediately drank with a glass of water, and then told the king, with whom they were friends, how he solved his problem.

Charles Dickens I drank half a liter of champagne every day. It all started with the fact that in 1858 Dickens, in order to raise his popularity by new level, decided to give lectures. His performances were extremely successful, and he traveled all over England and then went to America. And where there is a lecture, there is a subsequent meeting with readers! How can we live here without champagne? In addition, the writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head facing north. He also sat facing north when he wrote his great works.

Franz Kafka was the most humble person. He practically did not publish everything that he wrote, but he always read it aloud to his three Prague friends. Being seriously ill, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works after his death, including several unfinished novels. Brod did not fulfill this request, but, on the contrary, ensured the publication of the works that brought Kafka worldwide fame.

Ilf and Petrov They avoided cliché thoughts in a very original way. They discarded ideas that came to both of them at once.

Marie-François Arouet (Voltaire) simultaneously wrote several works. Sitting down at his desk, depending on his mood, he took the manuscript and continued to work on it.

Kir Bulychev- this is the final pseudonym of Vsevolod Mozheiko, but in general he changed them every month, especially when he worked in the magazine “Around the World”. He once signed himself "Sarah Fan" but was accused of anti-Semitism. We decided to simply put “S. Fan", but this was considered an attack against Korean people. Then Bulychev signed: “Ivan Shlagbaum.” Alexandre Dumas the father(1802-1870), whose green collection of works in fifteen volumes occupies the bookshelves in many apartments, did not write all these adventure novels himself. A whole staff of “literary blacks” worked for Dumas - at other times their number reached 70 people. More often than others, Dumas collaborated with the writer Auguste Macquet (1813-1888), who wrote, in particular, significant parts of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Montecristo. From the correspondence between Dumas and Macke it follows that the latter’s contribution to the beloved novels was very significant.

Main plot immortal work N. V. Gogol“The Inspector General” was suggested to the author by A. S. Pushkin. These great classics were good friends. Once Alexander Sergeevich told Nikolai Vasilyevich an interesting fact from the life of the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province. It was this incident that formed the basis of the work of Nikolai Gogol. Throughout the time he was writing The Inspector General, Gogol often wrote to Pushkin about his work, told him what stage it was in, and also repeatedly announced that he wanted to quit it. However, Pushkin forbade him to do this, so “The Inspector General” was still completed. By the way, Pushkin, who was present at the first reading of the play, was completely delighted with it.

The stable phrase “lost generation” came to us from the works Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's lost generation are young people who found themselves at the front in early age(for Hemingway, primarily the period between the two world wars), often not yet graduated from school, undecided in life, but began to kill early. After returning from the war, such people, morally or physically crippled, often could not adapt to peaceful life, many committed suicide, some went crazy. " Lost generation"became also called literary movement, which united such famous writers, like Ham himself, James Joyce, Erich Maria Remarque, Henri Barbusse, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Darya Dontsova, whose father was the Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad grade, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev was not thinking about this at all!”

Belarusian poet Adam Mickiewicz was also a science fiction writer. In the novel “The History of the Future,” he wrote about acoustic devices with the help of which, sitting by the fireplace, you can listen to concerts from the city, as well as about mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets.

Honore de Balzac I wrote in the dark, so even during the day I closed the curtains and lit candles. Starting to work on a new piece, Balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and closed the shutters tightly so that no light could penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a robe, for 18 hours every day.

U Lord Byron there were four pet geese that followed him everywhere, even at social gatherings. Despite being overweight and having a rather severe clubfoot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of his time.

To his close relatives he was Ronald, to his school friends he was John Ronald. At Oxford University, where he first studied and then taught, he was called “Tollers.” It's about O John Ronald Rowan Tolkien. By the way, in Denmark there is The Tolkien Ensemble - an ensemble named after Tolkien. This is Danish Symphony Orchestra, performing musical plays based on the works of Tolkien. He has the support of Queen Margaret II, a great fan of Tolkien's books, who herself illustrates his books.

Frankenstein- this is not the name of the famous monster at all. In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818, this same monster was simply called the "Monster." Victor Frankenstein was the name of a young student scientist from Geneva who created a living creature from non-living material.

Mark Twain was a good inventor. Among his developments are a notebook with tear-off leaves for journalists, a wardrobe with sliding shelves, and also the most ingenious of his inventions - a tie-tying machine!

Real name Daniel Defoe, was not de Fo, indicating noble origin, but simply Fo. By the way, he wrote not just one book, but more than 300. Moreover, among his works there are a lot scientific works on history, economics, geography, as well as a series of books on demonology and magic. He even wrote a book about the history of the reign of Peter I. One of the most prolific writers of all times was a Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to “Dog in the Manger,” he wrote another 1,800 plays, all of them in verse. He never worked on a single play for more than 3 days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers.

The life and work of the world's literary luminaries is rich in all sorts of interesting things. For example, Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov), industry (Karamzin), bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin), fade away (Dostoevsky), mediocrity (Severyanin), exhausted (Khlebnikov). In our library you can plunge into the fascinating world of masterpieces of world literature, as well as increase your erudition by becoming familiar with a lot of new information. We are waiting for you in our library!

The famous phrase “We all came from Gogol's overcoat”, which is used to express the humanistic traditions of Russian literature. The authorship of this expression is often attributed to Dostoevsky, but in fact the first person to say it was the French critic Eugene Vogüe, who discussed the origins of Dostoevsky’s work. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself cited this quote in a conversation with another French writer, who understood it as the writer’s own words and published them in this light in his work. The first manuscript " Strange story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Stevenson was burned by his wife. Biographers have two versions of why she did this: some say that she considered such a plot unworthy of a writer, others that she was unhappy with the incomplete disclosure of the topic of split personality. Nevertheless, Stevenson, suffering from tuberculosis, re-wrote this novella in three days, which became one of his most commercially successful works and allowed his family to get out of debt. The French writer Stendhal, after a visit to Florence in 1817, wrote: “When I left the Church of the Holy Cross, my heart began to beat, it seemed to me that the source of life had dried up, I walked, afraid of collapsing to the ground...” The masterpieces of art that excite the writer can have a similar effect on other people, causing rapid heartbeat and dizziness - such a psychosomatic disorder is called Stendhal syndrome. The person who has “picked up” it experiences extremely heightened emotions from contemplating the paintings, as if transported into the space of the image. Often the feelings are so strong that people try to destroy works of art. In more in a broad sense Stendhal syndrome can be caused by any observed beauty - for example, nature or women. There is a widely known legend about the medieval Swiss archer William Tell, who, for disobedience to the German governor, was forced to shoot at the apple on the head of his own son, and Tell did not miss. Inspired by this story, the American writer William Burroughs wanted to surprise the guests at one of the parties. He put a glass on the head of his wife Joan Vollmer and fired a pistol - the wife died from a hit in the head. JK Rowling finished her first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in 1995. The literary agent who agreed to represent her sent the manuscript to 12 publishing houses, but it was rejected by all of them. Only a year later the manuscript was accepted by the small London publishing house Bloomsbury, although it Chief Editor Even after the book was approved, he was sure that Rowling would not make much money from children's books, and advised her to find a permanent job. IN last years During his life, Ernest Hemingway became depressed and irritable, telling family and friends that FBI agents were following him everywhere. Several times the writer was treated in a psychiatric clinic, from where he also called friends, saying that there were bugs in the ward and their conversation was being listened to. Under the influence of electric shock, he lost the ability to write and formulate his thoughts as he could before. Finally, on July 2, 1961, Hemingway shot himself with a gun in his home. Several decades later, an official request was made to the FBI about the writer’s case, to which the answer came: surveillance and wiretapping took place, including in that mental hospital, since the authorities seemed suspicious of his activity in Cuba. The source of the plot for Gogol's play "The Inspector General" was real case in the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province, and Pushkin told the author about this incident. It was Pushkin who advised Gogol to continue writing the work when he more than once wanted to give up this work. One day, Francois Rabelais did not have the money to get from Lyon to Paris. Then he prepared three bags with the inscriptions “Poison for the King”, “Poison for the Queen” and “Poison for the Dauphin” and left them in a visible place in the hotel room. Upon learning of this, the hotel owner immediately reported to the authorities. Rabelais was captured and convoyed to the capital directly to King Francis I so that he could decide the writer’s fate. It turned out that the packages contained sugar, which Rabelais immediately drank with a glass of water, and then told the king, with whom they were friends, how he solved his problem.
Daria Dontsova, whose father was the Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad grade, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev was not thinking about this at all!” The fairy tale "The Wise Man of Oz" American writer Frank Baum was not published in Russian until 1991. At the end of the 30s, Alexander Volkov, who was a mathematician by training and taught this science at one of the Moscow institutes, began to study English language and for practice I decided to translate this book in order to retell it to my children. They really liked it, they began to demand a continuation, and Volkov, in addition to the translation, began to come up with something of his own. This was the beginning of his literary journey, the result of which was “The Wizard emerald city"and many other tales about the Magic Land. Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who, according to the writer's most famous biographer, Claude Schoppe, conceived the basis of the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made a significant contribution to The Three Musketeers. Although it should be noted that it was thanks to Dumas’ talent that his novels, even if they grew from the rough notes of his assistants, were saturated with vivid details and lively dialogues. Alexandre Dumas once took part in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: “I shot, but missed.” Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that his real name is Kramer (Remarque backwards). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews. Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, he compiled a description of the yard in which Raskolnikov hides the things he stole from the pawnbroker’s apartment from personal experience- when one day, while walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard to relieve himself.
In 1976, Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren's progressive income tax was 102%. The satirical article she wrote caused fierce controversy, which is believed to be the reason why members of the Swedish Social Democratic Party did not enter the government after the next elections for the first time in 40 years. After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga. The famous formula “Twice two equals five,” which George Orwell repeatedly emphasized in his dystopian novel “1984,” came to his mind when he heard the Soviet slogan “Five-Year Plan in Four Years!” The term “robot” was coined by the Czech writer Karel Capek. Although at first in his play he called humanoid mechanisms “laboratories” (from the Latin labor - work), he did not like this word. Then, on the advice of his brother Josef, he renamed them robots. By the way, in Czech, the word robota, the original word for this neologism, means not just work, but hard work or hard labor. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, in correspondence with his wife Olga Leonardovna Knipper, used to her, in addition to standard compliments and affectionate words, very unusual ones: “actress”, “dog”, “snake” and - feel the lyricism of the moment - “the crocodile of my soul”. Having fallen ill, Chekhov sent a messenger to the pharmacy for castor oil capsules. The pharmacist sent him two large capsules, which Chekhov returned with the inscription “I am not a horse!” Having received the writer’s autograph, the pharmacist happily replaced them with normal capsules.
When Alexandre Dumas wrote “The Three Musketeers” in serial format in one of the newspapers, the contract with the publisher stipulated line-by-line payment for the manuscript. To increase the fee, Dumas invented a servant of Athos named Grimaud, who spoke and answered all questions exclusively in monosyllables, in most cases “yes” or “no.” The continuation of the book, entitled “Twenty Years Later,” was paid by the word, and Grimaud became a little more talkative. Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.” Alexander Griboyedov was not only a poet, but also a diplomat. In 1829, he died in Persia along with the entire diplomatic mission at the hands of religious fanatics. To atone for their guilt, the Persian delegation arrived in St. Petersburg with rich gifts, among which was the famous Shah diamond weighing 88.7 carats. James Barrie created the image of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother. In 1835, Halley's comet flew near the Earth, and two weeks after its perihelion, Mark Twain was born. In 1909 he wrote: “I came into this world with a comet and I will leave with it too when it arrives in next year" And so it happened: Twain died on April 21, 1910, the day after the comet’s next perihelion. The term “bata-kusai” (translated as “smelling of butter”) is used by the Japanese who do not drink milk to describe everything foreign and Westernized. Elderly Japanese used the same expression to describe the writer Haruki Murakami for his commitment to Western image life. Lewis Carroll loved to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called older ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman alone, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent. The French writer and humorist Alphonse Allais, a quarter of a century before Kazimir Malevich, painted a black square - a painting called “Battle of the Negroes in a Cave” late at night" He also anticipated John Cage's minimalist musical piece of only silence "4'33" by almost seventy years with his similar work "Funeral March for the Funeral of the Great Deaf Man." Leo Tolstoy was skeptical about his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, he sent Fet a letter: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” An entry in his diary in 1908 reads: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.” The expression “Balzac age” arose after the publication of Balzac’s novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is acceptable for women no older than 40 years. French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who was irritated by the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he dined at her restaurant every day, explaining that this was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen. The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking. Franz Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime. Being seriously ill, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works after his death, including several unfinished novels. Brod did not fulfill this request, but, on the contrary, ensured the publication of the works that brought Kafka worldwide fame.
Shakespeare's hero had real prototype Italian Maurizio Othello. He commanded the Venetian forces in Cyprus and lost his wife there under extremely suspicious circumstances. Diminutive name Mauro in Italian also means “Moor,” which led to Shakespeare’s mistake in assigning such a nationality to the hero.
Winnie the Pooh got the first part of his name from one of the real toys of Christopher Robin, the son of the writer Milne. The toy was named after a female bear at the London Zoo named Winnipeg, who came there from Canada. The second part - Pooh - was borrowed from the name of the swan of acquaintances of the Milne family. In 1925, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."