The Dead Writers Round-Up: 9th-12th August

  • Hermann Hesse died on 8/9/1962. “Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.”
  • Louise Bogan was born on 8/11/1897. “Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.”
  • Edith Wharton died on 8/11/1937. “Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.”
  • William Blake died on 8/12/1827. “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”
  • Mary Roberts Rinehart was born on 8/12/1876. “The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer’s life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.”
  • Radclyffe Hall was born on 8/12/1880. “The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.”-The Well of Loneliness
  • Helen Hunt Jackson died on 8/12/1885. “Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; Each to his passion; what’s in a name?
  • Thomas Mann died on 8/12/1955. “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

[All images are in the Public Domain and are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]

 

A Year in Books/Day 189: Virginia Woolf

  • Title: Virginia Woolf
  • Author: Mary Ann Caws
  • Year Published: 2001 (The Overlook Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2002
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: The beauty of this volume is not in famed academic Caws’ disappointingly standard-issue prose but in the abundance of photographs decorating the pages. It’s a wee book you can read in an hour. The eclectic images of Woolf and her circle will make you pick it up again and again; most of the photos do not suffer from being over-published. They are fresh and compelling. My favourite is the back of a stripe-shirted (Dora) Carrington.
  • Motivation: Virginia Woolf! There’s nothing more to it than that.
  • Times Read: 2 or 3
  • Random Excerpt/Page 36: “Monk’s House was a perfect place for living and for visitors, for Leonard’s gardening and their writing. Endless discussions took place there, some of which are recounted in Virginia’s letters. Work went on constantly wherever Virginia and Leonard were, whether in Hogarth House or Monk’s House.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 (for the photographs)
     

     

     

     

     

     

     

Shopping for the Bookworm: NovelPoster Mini-Edition

You’ve probably seen text-based artwork by now. Although my favourite site, Etsy, has some lovely examples, today I am spotlighting a couple of images from NovelPoster. In addition to the artwork shown below, they also offer posters of Pride & Prejudice, the Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn and The Wizard of Oz. Enjoy!

The Great Gatsby by NovelPoster

The Great Gatsby by NovelPoster. $40.

The grey-ish background is actually comprised of the full text of the books.

20,000 Leagues by NovelPoster

20,000 Leagues by NovelPoster. $40.

Images courtesy of novelposter.com.

A Year in Books/Day 144: Anthony Trollope

  • Title: Anthony Trollope
  • Author: James Pope-Hennessy
  • Year Published: 1971/This Edition: 2001 (Phoenix Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2003/2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: The creator of fictional Barsetshire, and its memorable inhabitants, receives an excellent biographical treatment by Pope-Hennessy. To read a Trollope novel-especially one from this famed series-is to step into one of the greatest of all fictional worlds. It’s a beautifully self-contained experience. As part of the careful unfolding of the novelist’s life, we are introduced to his formidable mother, Fanny; a professional writer with a deep social conscience, she has been sadly neglected by most modern scholars. Her story offers an interesting counterpoint to that of her famous son.
  • Motivation: I am a Trollope fan. I love dead writers. Biographies are an obsession.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 102: “To sum up: we know extremely little about the pretty Yorkshire girl whom Anthony Trollope met at Kingstown near Dublin in the summertime of 1842, to whom he was engaged for the best part of three years, and whom he finally married.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    English: Anthony Trollope

    English: Anthony Trollope (Photo credit: Wikipedia)