A writer’s life -especially when the writer is a good one- is nothing less than boring.
In case you don’t believe us you read part 1, part 2, and part 3 in order to find out more exciting facts about the lives of some of the most popular writers of the world. Right now we are about to find out even more fun facts about their lives!
- Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was only 18 years old.
- It was published when she was 21!
- Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein for a ghost story challenge during “The Year Without Summer”.
- People throughout history have considered Mary Shelley to be the creator of science fiction.
- She firstly published it anonymously.
- It is said that when her husband died by drowning at a young age, his body was cremated, but Mary kept his heart.
- It was found on her writing desk beside her last work in progress.
- Her mother was a feminist and this fact influenced her writing.
- Mary Shelley wrote more novels throughout her career that readers may not know about and for sure more than just Frankenstein.
- Mary Shelley lost her virginity in a… sanctuary!
- Charlotte Bronte was only 5 years old when she lost her mother out of ovarian cancer.
- She started writing at an early age while studying in a boarding school.
- In her late teens and early twenties, Brontë worked on and off as a teacher and governess.
- She didn’t like it though.
- She later used her early work experiences as inspiration for passages in Jane Eyre.
- Charlotte Bronte was rejected because of her gender!
- This is why she used a male pseudonym.
- She used the same Currer Bell pseudonym when she published Jane Eyre.
- In 1846, Brontë paid to publish a book of poetry containing poems she and her sisters Emily and Anne had written.
- It only sold 2 copies.
- But Jane Eyre was an instant success.
- Most of the reviewers loved it, but there some who were criticizing it for being coarse in content, including one who called it “anti-Christian.”
- Tuberculosis prematurely killed at least four of Brontë’s five siblings.
- Luckily enough she survived from tuberculosis.
- She died at the age of 38, while she was pregnant!
- Her pregnancy wasn’t smooth (we’d say the opposite) leading to her becoming severely dehydrated and malnourished.
- There are speculations she died out of typhus, but nothing is confirmed.
- Charlotte could see well in the dark, but not in the light.
- Her actual surname was the actual surname of Brunty or Prunty, but her father changed when he earned a scholarship in Cambridge so that he could hide his poor identity.
- She could speak the Irish accent.
- She was kinda short- she was around four and a half feet tall.
- She fell in love with her married teacher and he actually inspired her.
- Charlotte Brontë rejected at least three proposals of marriage that we know of.
- She actually knew a family named Eyre.
- Charlotte owned a piece of Napoleon’s coffin.
- It was a gift from the teacher she fell in love with and his wife, and right now it is kept in her Museum.
- The death of Charlotte’s sisters caused her to change her third novel
- In her early years, Agatha Christie didn’t go to school but was educated at home by her mother and a succession of governesses.
- She wrote her first book as the result of a challenge from her sister Madge.
- In her late teens, she studied to be a classical musician but was too nervous to perform.
- She is the only crime writer to have created two equally famous and much-loved characters
- These are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
- She is the only female dramatist ever to have had three plays running simultaneously in London’s West End.
- Endless Night is narrated by a young working-class male – and she wrote it when she was 76.
- In 1922 she traveled around the world.
- Her first book waited five years before publication having been rejected by six publishers.
- She wrote six bittersweet novels under the name Mary Westmacott.
- She wrote an entire book over one weekend: Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott.
- When she adopted four of her Poirot novels for the stage she dropped Poirot completely.
- Hallowe’en Party is dedicated to P.G.Wodehouse whom she admired.
- She dedicated The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side to Margaret Rutherford – the first cinema Miss Marple.
- She was a dog lover.
- She described The Mystery of the Blue Train as ‘easily the worst book I ever wrote’.
- When he died, Hercule Poirot was given a full-page obituary in The New York Times.
- Her favorite color was green.
- She never said, ‘An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have because the older she gets the more interested he becomes in her’.
- Her home in Torquay, Greenway House, was requisitioned by the U.S. Navy during the Second World War.
- She has a rose named after her.
- She is the only crime novelist to achieve equal and international fame as a dramatist.
- For many years she was the President of the local amateur drama society in Wallingford.
- She was a teetotaller and non-smoker.
- For many years she set and corrected an essay competition for the pupils of the local school.
- On the day she died the West End theatres dimmed their lights for one hour.
- Miss Marple was modeled on her maternal grandmother.
- Two of her pet hates were marmalade pudding and cockroaches.
- Her favorite writers were Elizabeth Bowen and Graham Greene.
- When she wrote the part of Clarissa in Spider’s Web for the film star Margaret Lockwood, she also, unasked, created a role for Lockwood’s daughter.
- The first stage Poirot was Charles Laughton.
- On 13th April 1917, she qualified as a dispenser, thus acquiring her knowledge of poisons.
- Her last public appearance was at the 1974 premiere of Murder on the Orient Express.
- Sylvia Plath published her first poem when she was eight years old.
- It was called “Poem” and it was published in the Boston Herald in 1941.
- She originally majored in studio art at Smith College before switching to English.
- Her visual art was put on display at the Smithsonian National Gallery and you see it in person until May 20, 2018.
- At age 12, her IQ was recorded at around 160.
- Her father died when she was eight, and this experience inspired much of her work.
- One of her most famous poems is dedicated to him. It’s the poem named “Daddy”.
- She won a Fulbright Scholarship.
- She chose June 16th for her wedding date in honor of James Joyce’s Novel ‘Ulysses’
- “The Bell Jar” was originally rejected by publishers.
- She originally published ‘The Bell Jar’ under the pen name “Victoria Lucas.”
- Sylvia Plath received electroshock therapy for her clinical depression.
- She lived in an apartment that had been previously occupied by W.B. Yeats.
- Maha Angelou’s actual birth name is Marguerite Johnson.
- Maya’s older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed her “Maya,” meaning “my sister.”
- When she was a teenager, Maya won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School.
- But when she was 14 years old she dropped out of school to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor.
- She gave birth to her first and only child — her son, Guy — when she was 16 years old.
- She never went to college but has received more than 50 honorary degrees.
- She recorded an album in 1957 titled Calypso.
- She acted in the Off-Broadway show, The Blacks.
- She wrote and performed in Cabaret for Freedom.
- She moved to Cairo, Egypt, and was the editor of The Arab Observer.
- After one year in Cairo, she moved to Ghana and taught at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama.
- She befriended Malcolm X — and planned on helping him build his new Organization of Afro-American Unity — before he was killed.
- She worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times.
- She helped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights movement as the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
- Martin Luther King died on her birthday in 1968.
- So, she didn’t celebrate her birthday in the years that followed.
- She was born on April 4th.
Got anything to add?