Secret Lives of Great Authors

by Robert Schnakenberg

Paperback, 2008

Status

Available

Call number

809

Publication

Quirk Books (2008), Paperback, 304 pages

Description

In the tradition of Quirk's bestselling Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents (100,000+ copies in print), here are outrageous and uncensored profiles of the world's greatest writers, complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright bizarre facts. Consider--Edgar Allan Poe was kicked out of West Point Military Academy.-Louisa May Alcott was addicted to opium.-W. B. Yeats paid surgeons to transplant monkey glands into his scrotum.-J. R. R. Tolkien slept in his bathroom.-Kurt Vonnegut managed a Saab dealership before hitting the big time.With chapters on everyone from William Shakespeare to Thomas Pynchon, Secret Lives of Great Authors tackles all the tough questions your teachers were afraid to answer- What's the deal with Lewis Carroll and little girls? Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? Why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie's Angels? The classics were never this much fun in school!… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member spk27

There are some truly amazing facts in this book, of which my personal favourite was the revelation that Mark Twain once gave a speech to an audience that included Queen Elizabeth I.

Pretty impressive, given that she died more than 200 years before he was born.

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LibraryThing member mstrust

After a brief bio and explanation of why an author became famous, or even, iconic, their chapter is broken up into smaller sections of juicy gossip involving serious character flaws, kinks, scandals or just the unearthing of little-known facts. Who knew that Oscar Wilde's teeth were black due to

mercury treatment, that H.G. Wells met and liked Stalin or that Tolkien was known around Oxford for trying to force other cars off the road? And Agatha Christie's father was American, which is something I'd never heard before, and the whole mess with Hemingway's favorite son is bizarre.

If you tend to like The People's Almanac type books, as I do, because they lead you to authors and give good backstories, you'll probably like this one. Added bonus are the drawings of each author, usually doing something anti-social such as Alcott cuddling a bottle of laudanum.

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LibraryThing member lindap69

fun collection of facts, quotes and trivia about some of the classic authors

LibraryThing member LibroLindsay

Great trivia for all of us book nerds.

LibraryThing member knightlight777

I vignette of quirky unknown things about many high profile authors. I enjoyed the gossipy nature of the presentations. It seems most of these great talents had the bent of strangeness that is so attached to creative genius. Well maybe not always genius but enough to be memorialized in their work.

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