Blind Horse Books

  DID YOU KNOW …..…..An early draft of John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men was eaten by his dog. It was Max, one of several dogs Steinbeck owned during his life, who devoured the novel’s draft and so became, in effect, the book’s first critic. …….In the 1980s, a rumor arose that Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath had been translated into Japanese as ‘The Angry Raisins’. This rumor was, however, false. It is a good example of how people love a good ‘lost in translation’ story. ……Steinbeck used 300 pencils to write East of Eden . He was known to use up to 60 pencils in a day, preferring the pencil to a typewriter or pen. The Grapes of Wrath, portrayed the plight of migrant workers during the Great Depression. Widely considered Steinbeck's finest and most ambitious novel, The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939. Telling the story of a dispossessed Oklahoma family and their struggle to carve out a new life in California at the height of the Great Depression, th...

  Did You Know: A Clockwork Orange was one of several novels Burgess churned out quickly – because he thought he was dying. Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer. From relatively modest beginnings in Manchester, England he became one of the best-known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Although Burgess was predominantly a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel.   In 1971 it was adapted into a highly controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers, regarded by most critics as his greatest novel. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including for the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a literary critic, including for The Observer and The Guardian, and wrote studies of classic writers, notably James Joyc...

  Wilhelm's character was a complete contrast to that of his brother. As a boy, growing up he suffered a long and severe illness which left him weak the rest of his life. He had a less comprehensive and energetic mind than his brother, and he had less of the spirit of investigation, preferring to confine himself to some limited and definitely constrained field of work. He utilized everything that bore directly on his own studies and ignored the rest. These studies were almost always of a literary nature. Wilhelm took great delight in music and he had a remarkable gift of story-telling. He is described as “an uncommonly animated, jovial fellow.” He was, accordingly, much sought in society, which he frequented much more than his brother. A collection of fairy tales was first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, known in English as Grimms' Fairy Tales.   Get a Daily Dose of Literary History: Like and Follow Blind Horse Books. Building Great Collections, ...