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Five Fascinating Facts about Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1. He was the original ‘airy-fairy’ poet. The phrase ‘airy-fairy’ – now used as a derogatory term for something light and insubstantial –...

Herman Melville; Not Just The Writer Of Whale Worriers

Born in New York City to a wealthy and socially connected family, Herman Melville (1819-1891) chose a life as exciting as that of his Mob...

Henri Charrière, Imprisoned On The Inescapable Devil’s Island — Then He Escaped and wrote Papillon

How Henri Charrière escaped from one of history's most infamous prisons and then won his freedom from the government that he claimed had w...

When Aldous Huxley Had The 'Most Beautiful Death'

Brave New World novelist Aldous Huxley was diagnosed with cancer in 1960, at which point his health slowly began to deteriorate. On his d...

What Makes Edgar Allan Poe So Great? An Animated Video Explains

His gloomy, haunted visage adorns the covers of collected works, publications of whose like he would never see in his lifetime. Edgar All...

10 Delightful Icelandic Words and Phrases

1. "I COME COMPLETELY FROM THE MOUNTAINS." Ég kem alveg af fjöllum. This phrase throws some shade at mountain dwellers, and means, “I hav...

The Origin of the English Alphabet (and all its 26 letters)

The English alphabet has a fascinating history, and the development of each letter of the alphabet has its own story. Although English is...

Where art thou, Mother Christmas? by Roald Dahl

It’s a great shame that Roald Dahl never actually wrote any full-length Christmas stories. The subject is the perfect territory for him. ...

Jane Austin and her use of pins to edit her work

The common consensus is that writers hate editing, but that’s not always the case. Truman Capote once said, “I’m all for the scissors. I ...

In 1988, Kurt Vonnegut Writes a Letter to People Living in 2088, Giving 7 Pieces of Advice

The mind of Kurt Vonnegut, like the protagonist of his best-known novel Slaughterhouse-Five, must have got "unstuck in time" somewhere a...

Farewell, My Dear Brother

On October 15th of 1944, with support from Nazi Germany, the far-right Arrow Cross Party took control of Hungary and immediately began to...

Jólabókaflóðið, The Christmas Book Flood

December abounds with holidays and reasons to celebrate. There's St. Nicholas Day, the Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Lucia Day, H...

What Makes Edgar Allan Poe So Great? This Animated Video Explains

His gloomy, haunted visage adorns the covers of collected works, publications of whose like he would never see in his lifetime. Edgar All...

Behind the Scenes: Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Walt Disney was a big fan of live-action reference and nearly the entire movie would be filmed before being used to guide the artists thr...

When Bookshop Employees Get Bored.

If you've worked in retail you'll know how boredom can often kick in. These industrious bookshop employees have found a novel way to comb...

Bertrand Russell’s Delicious Response To British Fascist Oswald Mosley

Free speech has no limits. If it does, it’s no longer free. But the will to debate the status quo, ridicule the conflicting and disinfect...

Why English Is So Hard To Learn

Language families There are around 6,000 spoken languages in the world today, and some are more distantly related to each other than ot...

Why Is English So Hard to Learn?: The Ingenious Poem, 'The Chaos' by Gerard Nolst Trenité

In 1920, Dutch writer and traveler Gerard Nolst Trenité, also known as Charivarius, published a textbook called Drop Your Foreign Accent:...

Roald Dahl, Who Lost His Daughter to Measles, Writes a Heartbreaking Letter about Vaccinations

Generations of us know Roald Dahl as, first and foremost, the author of popular children's novels like The BFG, The Witches, Charlie and ...

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