author trivia | Guy Portman's Blog

20 Bizarre Author-Related Facts

Oct 13 2017

In recent years I have dedicated a number of blog posts to the topic of bizarre author-related trivia. Here are 20 of the most bizarre author facts I have come across to date.

Modernist writer Katherine Mansfield wore a mourning dress to her own wedding.

Zadie Smith spent the best part of 2 years writing and rewriting the first 20 pages of her novel, On Beauty.

William Burroughs accidentally killed his partner Joan Vollmer by shooting her in the head.

There is an asteroid named after Kurt Vonnegut.

J.R.R. Tolkien typed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy with two fingers.

Dr Seuss included the word ‘contraceptive’ in a draft of his children’s book Hop on Pop to make sure the publisher was concentrating.

It took Helen Hooven Santmyer 50 years to pen And Ladies of the Club.

Dan Brown is a fan of inversion therapy He often hangs upside down in antigravity boots because he claims it helps him relax.

John Boyne claims to have written The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas in only 2 and a half days.

ELIYZABETH YANNE STRONG-ANDERSON is the author of Birth Control Is Sinful in the Christian Marriages and Also Robbing God of Priesthood. Every letter in the book capitalised.

Helen Hoover Santymeyer was 88 when her seminal work And Ladies of the Club was published.

John Steinbeck — Steinbeck was obsessed with pencils, particularly Blackwing 602’s.

American music critic and author Gustav Kobbé’s was out sailing when a seaplane misjudged its descent and struck his boat, killing him.

Vladimir Nabokov had a fixation with index cards. The majority of his novels were written out on cards with a pencil.

Dorothy Parker’s epitaph reads, Excuse my dust

Victor T. Cheney is the author of Castration: The Advantages and the Disadvantages.

In 1912 Ambrose Bierce invented 1 of the earliest emoticons, the snigger point, written as \ ___ /! It was designed to look like a smiling mouth.

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables contains a sentence that is 823 words long.

Jane Austen never married, but she was engaged for 1 night. She accepted the proposal of marriage 2 weeks prior to her 27th birthday. Austen changed her mind the next day.

Billy Wilder epitaph is, I’m a writer but then nobody’s perfect

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15 Bizarre Male Author Facts

Jun 03 2016

Here are 15 bizarre male author facts.

Pile of Books

Did you know that:

There is an asteroid named after Kurt Vonnegut.

Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables in the nude. Hugo would order his valet to hide his clothes until after he had finished writing.

Only 10 people attended D. H. Lawrence’s funeral. 1 of them was Aldous Huxley.

Billy Wilder’s epitaph is – I’m a writer but then nobody’s perfect.

William Burroughs accidentally killed his partner Joan Vollmer by shooting her in the head.

WilliamBurroughs

On his marriage document in 1582, William Shakespeare’s name was spelled William Shagspeare.

American music critic and author Gustav Kobbé’s was out sailing when a seaplane misjudged its descent and struck his boat, killing him.

American playwright Tennessee Williams died from swallowing a bottle of eye drops.

In 1912 Ambrose Bierce invented 1 of the earliest emoticons, the snigger point, written as \ ___ /! It was designed to look like a smiling mouth.

Vladimir Nabokov had a ‘genitalia’ cabinet, in which he stored his collection of male butterfly genitalia.

Nabokov

Dr Seuss included the word ‘contraceptive’ in a draft of his children’s book Hop on Pop to make sure the publisher was concentrating.

On his deathbed when asked by the priest to renounce Satan, Voltaire allegedly said, ‘Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.’

John Boyne claims to have written The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas in only 2 and a half days.

Henry David Thoreau’s last words were allegedly, ‘Moose. Indian.’ Perhaps not the most rational last words ever uttered, but apt, considering the subject matter of Thoreau’s writing.

Vladimir Nabokov had a fixation with index cards. The majority of his novels were written out on cards with a pencil. Nabokov also wrote standing up.

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I am the author of the satirical black comedy, Necropolis.

Bizarre Female Author Facts

May 27 2016

This week’s blog post is devoted to Bizarre Female Author Facts. I haven’t forgotten about the men. It will be their turn next week.

booksnew

Did you know that:

Modernist writer Katherine Mansfield wore a mourning dress to her own wedding.

Jane Austen never married, but she was engaged for 1 night. She accepted the proposal of marriage 2 weeks prior to her 27th birthday. Austen changed her mind the next day.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) lived next door to Mark Twain.

Agatha Christie came to have a strong disliking for her creation Hercule Poirot.

Dorothy Parker’s epitaph reads — Excuse my dust.

Agatha Christie

Jane Austen was the first person known to have used the word ‘outsider’.

Zadie Smith spent the best part of 2 years writing and rewriting the first 20 pages of her novel, On Beauty.

Romance author Ida Pollock is widely considered to be the World’s oldest ever author. She died aged 105, just weeks before her 125th book was published.

It took Helen Hooven Santmyer 50 years to pen And Ladies of the Club.

Virginia Woolf was the granddaughter of novelist William Makepeace Thackeray.

By her late 30s Emily Dickinson was so reclusive that she rarely left her house and spoke to visitors from the other side of her closed front door.

Emily Dickinson

Maya Angelou’s writing routine entailed travelling to a bare hotel room every morning, where she would write until about 2 p.m.

Agatha Christie’s favourite food was Devonshire Cream.

Helen Hoover Santymeyer was 88 when her seminal work And Ladies of the Club was published.

Dorothy Straight is on record as being the youngest published author ever. At the age of 4 she wrote a story for her grandmother, which went on to be published when she was 6.

Author and essayist Flannery O’Connor not only wrote at the same time every day, but also in the same place. That special place was facing her blank wood dresser, which provided no distractions.

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