Books Trivia | 100 facts & trivia about famous authors (part 3)

A writer’s life can be so much more than writing a good book. Actually, some people believe that a writer’s fascinating life inspires a great book.

In case you don’t believe us you can actually read some fascinating facts about the extraordinary lives of famous authors in part 1 and part 2.

1. Woolf and her husband had a (reaally) understanding in their marriage.
2. When she met fellow writer Vita Sackville-West, the romantic relationship that developed between them was not secret or illicit.
3. In fact, something that the women talked openly about.
4. Woolf right now is considered a classic writer, but Sackville-West was by far the more successful of the two.
5. Throughout the entirety of her life, Woolf struggled with mental illness.
6. She was sexually abused at the hand of her two half-brothers.
7. When her mother and one of her sisters died her problems worsened.
8. Her problems were exacerbated by her father’s death, which led to her first stay in a mental health facility.
9. Woolf strictly avoided mirrors.
10. For a time, she even limited her writing, as she was instructed by doctors to avoid intellectual activity and focus instead on physical work.
11. Woolf’s depression worsened and she filled her pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse.
12. Two weeks later her body was found.
13. Stephen King admitted that his drug and alcohol issues were so bad in the 80’s that he actually wrote all of Cujo without remembering it happening.
14. Tennessee Williams choked to death from inhaling the small plastic cap usually found on a nasal spray or eye solution bottle.
15. In case of fire, Danish author Hans Christian Andersen always brought an emergency coil of rope whenever he had to stay in a hotel.
16. The second draft of American poet Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road was typed up in three weeks.
17. Kerouac’s parents were actually French Canadian.
18. He didn’t start learning English until he was six years old and didn’t get the hang of it until he was a teenager.
19. Kerouac never abandoned his faith in God or Jesus Christ.
20. Kerouac is considered the “founder” of the Beatnik Generation.
21. Even though he would study Buddhism to expand his spiritual palate, he remained a faithful Catholic for the rest of his life.
22. Kerouac wrote his first novel in 1942 when he was serving as a US Merchant Marine.
23. The term “Beat Generation” actually came from Kerouac himself.
24. According to Kerouac, the term “beat” was taken from two of its meanings. One was the slang term meaning “tired”—which makes sense, given how marginalized some of these figures were in their society, the term was fitting.
25. In the 1990s, an auction was held selling Kerouac’s memorabilia, which was estimated to be worth between $10-$20 million.
26. Soon after he met Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs at Columbia University in the mid-1940s, Kerouac began his writing fiction based heavily on his real life.
27. On the Road received a rather rapid backlash after its release.
28. The Doors, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles were inspired by Jack Kerouac.
29. Kerouac was also a poet.
30. In his own lifetime, three poetry books (Mexico City Blues, Book of Sketches, and The Scripture of the Golden Eternity) were released under his name.
31. After Kerouac’s death, nine more were eventually published between 1970 and 2012.
32. The idea for the Twilight series came to Stephenie Meyer in a dream
33. Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Florida’s Key West holds an annual Ernest Hemingway Lookalike Contest
34. Hemingway once lived there.
35. It’s a 3-day festival, with over 160 hopeful contestants.
36. During his writing career, Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World) discovered psychedelics.
37. Huxley even asked his wife to inject him with LSD on his deathbed.
38. Charles Bukowski survived on one candy bar a day.
39. It was a Payday–nougat rolled in salted peanuts and caramel–and it only cost a nickel.
40. Bukowski also really loved cats.
41. Actually, all of his musings and poems about his love affair with furry felines have been collated into a book.
42. William Faulkner dropped out of high school in his second year.
43. Faulkner liked to work late at night when he’d get his many ideas, with a bottle of Jack Daniels on hand.
44. Jack Daniels was his favorite bottle of whiskey.
45. While on a plane, J. K. Rowling came up with the names for the famous houses of Hogwarts.
46. She actually wrote them down on a motion sickness bag!
47. Rowling chose her initials J and K as a way to keep her identity anonymous and gender-neutral.
48. She was concerned that a story revolving around magic and wizards might fail if written by a woman.
49. Her first name is Joanne, but she actually has no middle name. The “K” comes from her grandmother’s name.
50. Margaret Atwood attended Harvard for graduate school.
51. She and her other female students were expected to serve the male students tea and cookies during long seminars.
52. Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss of Green Eggs and Ham, was afraid of children but liked to amuse them.
53. He invented the commonly used pop culture word “nerd.”
54. George R.R. Martin grew up very humbly in the projects in New Jersey.
55. He always wanted to travel, and his insatiable reading helped him to escape.
56. The first name of Game of Thrones was a book series named A Song of Ice and Fire.
57. Martin still writes on a seemingly ancient computer by today’s standards.
58. He uses WordStar processor 4.0 software, which was once popular in the 1980s.
59. He claims it fulfills his every writing need.
60. Sylvia Plath suffered a mental breakdown and years of writer’s block.
61. Once a collection of her poems was accepted for publishing, however, she was able to break the spell of her block.
62. She went straight to work and completed a draft of The Bell Jar in 70 days
63. Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers didn’t see eye to eye with Walt Disney when her book was adapted into a children’s sing-a-long film.
64. She loathed the songs and didn’t agree with how Mary Poppins was cinematically brought to life, because Mary Poppins was supposed to be rather sharp and brisk, not gentle and kind.
65. Dan Brown was once was a solo pop singer.
66. One of his albums is titled Angels and Demons.
67. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a love affair with cocktails, drinking them regularly.
68. He believed that gin was difficult to detect on one’s breath,
69. Two of his favorite cocktails, The Bailey and The Gin Rickey, were the go-to beverages for the writer.
70. Jane Austen never married.
71. Lisbeth Salander, the dark and heroic character from Stieg Larsson’s Millennium crime series, is based on Larsson’s imaginings of a grown-up, unconventional version of Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking.
72. George Orwell was born in India.
73. His real name was Eric Blair.
74. Orwell’s father was a civil servant employed by the Opium Department of the British Indian government.
75. William Shakespeare first used the word… swagger!
76. Roald Dahl had a strict writing habit. Every day, he wrote for two hours in the morning from 10am–12pm, and then again for two hours in the evening from 4pm–6pm.
77. After a series of tragic childhood events that resulted in the death of her mother’s abusive boyfriend, Maya Angelou did not speak for the next five years.
78. She believed that her words had caused her mother’s death.
79. The best selling living author is Danielle Steel.
80. She sold over 800 million copies of her books.
81. She had to enroll at The Fear of Flying Clinic because her phobia was starting to impact her career.
82. Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert had a stint as a bartender at the Coyote Ugly Saloon in New York City.
83. Mark Twain loved Bermuda.
84. Even though the trip was treacherous, and the author was notorious for getting horribly seasick.
85. Twain made the journey multiple times in his life.
86. His back and forth put Bermuda on the tourist map.
87. Rather than autographing his books with a pen, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S. Thompson used to shoot his books as an autograph.
88. Using the same shock value tactic, Thompson came up with “shotgun golf,” first thought of with Bill Murray.
89. The game involves either hitting the ball onto the green with the club or shooting the opponent’s ball with a shotgun into smithereens.
90. Thompson once terrorized his friend Jack Nicholson’s family with gunshots, spotlights, and a fresh elk’s heart on the doorstep all because it was Nicholson’s birthday and he thought it was funny.
91. The Nicholsons were so scared that Jack called the FBI fearing that it was a stalker and his family spent the night hiding in the cellar.
92. There is speculation that JK Rowling was in an abusive relationship with her ex-husband, a Portuguese TV journalist named Jorge Arantes.
93. People speculate that this is why child abuse (the Dursleys) and freedom are such huge themes in the Harry Potter series.
94. Joanne’s parents met on a train from King’s Cross Station, which Joanne later used in the Harry Potter books as a gateway into the Wizarding World.
95. While developing the Harry Potter books, J.K. based Hermione Granger’s character on herself when she was 11 years old.
96. During her time in the sixth form, Joanne’s best friend at the time, Sean, had a car that ended up being the inspiration for the flying version in the Harry Potter movies.
97. When J.K. Rowling was writing the first Harry Potter book, she and her daughter were staying with her sister.
98. She didn’t have a stable income at the time and she was living off of welfare.
99. In 1990, Joanne was on a four-hour delayed train where the idea for Harry Potter became fully formed into her mind.
100. Once she reached her destination, she started writing immediately.