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50 Essential Facts About Literature

The 50 facts that you MUST know on your way to becoming a Literature expert!

Agatha Christie is the best selling novelist of all time	Bestsellers
The best selling and most widely distributed book of all time is the Bible
The best selling refernce book is "Xinhua Zidian," a Chinese dictionary
"Don Quixote" by Migel de Cervantes is the bestselling novel of all time
J.K. Rowling was the first author to make a billion dollars from book sales
Shakespeare is said to have invented about 2,000 words	Words
"Bookworm" and "bibliophile" are 2 words used to describe book-lovers
A "tsundoku" is a person who buys more books than they will ever read
Some of us love the smell of old books. This is called "bibliosmia"
Raymond Chandler invented the word "unputdownable" to describe a book
Publishers rejected "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" 12 times	Rejected
Moby Dick was rejected for being "long and old fashioned"
"Irish Wine" by Dick Wimmer was rejected 162 times before it was published
Beatrix Potter’s "Peter Rabbit" was rejected 6 times by publishers
"First Impressions" was rejected, then published as "Pride and Prejudice"
George Eliot was a woman. Her real name was Mary Ann Evans	Pseudonyms
Eric Blair chose the king's name and a river as his pen name: George Orwell
Horror writer Stephen King also wrote under the name Richard Bachman
JK Rowling published an adult novel under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith
Agatha Christie published 6 romance novels as Mary Westmacott
"The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger is banned in some US schools	Banned
As is "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
"1984" by George Orwell was banned in the USSR and some US counties
Alice in Wonderland was banned in China because it includes talking animals
In 1960 Penguin were taken to court for publishing "Lady Chaterley's Lover"
The most expensive book cost $30.8 million! It's "Codex Leicester" by Di Vinci	Trivia
Victor Hugo’s "Les Miserables" contains an 823 word sentence
Charles Dickens slept facing north, thinking it would improve his writing
The first novel written on a typewriter was "Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain
John Steinbeck's first draught of "Of Mice and Men" was eaten by his dog
The longest novel is "Remembrance of Things Past" with 9,609,000 characters	Length
The longest book title is made up of 3,777 words. There's no room for it here!
The longest series is possibly "Guin Saga" which has over 100 volumes
The shortest novel is 40,000 words. Any shorter and it would be a novella
"The Dinosaur" by Augusto Monterroso is only 9 words long
"Pride goes before a fall" is a misquotation from the Bible	Misquotes
As is "Money is the root of all evil"
The Shakespeare quote "To gild the lily" is a misrepresentation of his words
“Me Tarzan, You Jane” never appeared in any of the Tarzan books
“Elementary, my dear Watson” never appears in the Sherlock Holmes stories
David Walliams has won the Children's Book Award three times	Awards
Established in 1919, the James Tait Black prize is the UK's oldest book award
The Costa Book Awards (the Whitbread Literary Awards) began in 1971
In 1975 there were 83 Booker Prize entries. Just 2 made it onto the shortlist
The Nobel Prize for Literature has been won most often by French authors
The classic "Bladerunner" is based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"	Adaptations
A poll on Goodreads voted the "Percy Jackson" series the worst adaptations
142 minute film "Shawshank Redemption" is based on a 93 page story
Charles Dickens is the most adapted author of all time
The Grimm Brothers' "Cinderella" is much gorier than Disney's adaptation

50 Essential Facts About Literature

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