Literary Miscellany

- Blurb -

Packed with fascinating facts, Literary Miscellany is sure to please both professor and pleasure reader alike. Wouldn' t it be great to be a fly on the wall as the great writers took pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard)? While reading this work, you' ll be just that. Here are behind-the-book stories and facts about authors, publishing and everything literary that will entertain both casual and serious readers. Among the questions asked and answered: * When Did Literature Finally Get Sexy? * Is Coffee or Opium Better for Literary Creativity? * Why Are the Best Autobiographies so Embarrassing? * Why Do Some Detectives Use Their Minds and Others Their Fists? Who knew that bestseller lists and children' s books could be the source of intense controversy? Or that even the biggest writers had to scrape by, with odd jobs and inventions like the Mark Twain Self-Pasting Scrapbook? In Literary Miscellany, examine the trend of "fake memoirs," with a list of who lied about what, and a rogues' gallery of hoaxers dating back centuries. From epic poetry and Homer to pulp fiction and Harry Potter, Literary Miscellany, now available for the first time in paperback, is a breezy tour through the literature of today and yesterday, packed with enough interesting facts to entertain both the erudite professor and pleasure reader.