Blind Horse Books

  He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for his novel All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. An American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review in 1935.  While still an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, Warren became associated with the group of poets there known as the Fugitives, and somewhat later, during the early 1930s, Warren and some of the same writers formed a group known as the Southern Agrarians.  During this time young Warren defended racial segregation, In "The Briar Patch" in line with the traditionalist conservative political leanings of the Agrarian group. However, Warren recanted these views in an article on the Civil Rights Movement, "Divided So...

  William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". The exact date of his birth is not recorded, but it is most often celebrated around the world on 23 April. Shakespeare’s baptism is recorded in the Parish Register at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon on Wednesday 26 April 1564. Baptisms typically took place within three days of a new arrival, Did you know: Shakespeare left his wife his “second best best” ……….On his death, Shakespeare made several gifts to various people but left his property to his daughter, Susanna. The only mention of his wife in Shakespeare’s own will is: “I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” was the bedclothes for the bed. Shakespeare died on his birthday. ………. William Shakespeare’s burial at Holy Trinity Church in Str...

  Richard Hughes was brought up in the West Indies in Jamaica and only wrote only four novels, the most famous of which is The Innocent Voyage (1929), or A High Wind in Jamaica, as Hughes renamed it soon after its initial publication.   Set in the 19th century, it explores the events which follow the accidental capture of a group of English children by pirates: the children are revealed as considerably more amoral than the pirates (it was in this novel that Hughes first described the cocktail Hangman's Blood, recipe below).  During 1938, he wrote an allegorical novel In Hazard based on the true story of the S.S. Phemius that was caught in the 1932 Cuba hurricane for 4 days during its maximum intensity. He also wrote volumes of children's stories, including The Spider's Palace, plays and poetry. A High Wind in Jamaica was made into a film of the same name in 1965. The book was initially titled The Innocent Voyage and published by Harper & Brothers in the spring of that...

  Richard Harding Davis (1864 –1916) was a journalist and writer of fiction and drama, known foremost as the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish–American War, the Second Boer War, and the First World War. Davis was a managing editor of Harper's Weekly and was one of the world's leading war correspondents at the time of the Second Boer War in South Africa. As an American, he had the opportunity to see the war first-hand from both the British and Boer perspectives. Davis also worked as a reporter for the New York Herald, The Times, and Scribner's Magazine. During the Spanish–American War, Davis was on a United States Navy warship when he witnessed the shelling of Matanzas, Cuba, a part of the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. Davis' story made headlines, but as a result, the Navy prohibited reporters from being aboard any American naval vessel for the rest of the war. Davis was a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and he helped create the legend surrounding th...

  Isak Dinesen, whose finely crafted stories, set in the past and pervaded with an aura of supernaturalism, incorporate the themes of eros and dreams was the pseudonym of Karen Blixen Dinesen married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914 and went with him to Africa. There they owned and directed a coffee plantation in Kenya and became big-game hunters. After her divorce in 1921 she continued to operate the plantation for 10 years until mismanagement, drought, and the falling price of coffee forced her return to Denmark. The book is a poetic reminiscence of her triumphs and her sorrows on the loss of her farm, the death of her companion, the English hunter Denys Finch Hatton, and the disappearance of the simple African way of life she admired. In 1944 she produced her only novel The Angelic Avengers under the pseudonym Pierre Andrézel. It is a melodramatic tale of innocents who defeat their apparently benevolent but actually evil captor, but Danish readers saw in it a cleve...

 Abdul-Jabbar, is best known for his basketball career. He first played (and dominated) in high school, at New York City’s Power Memorial Academy, then at UCLA under legendary coach John Wooden, and finally as a six-time professional champion with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers. There is a strong and devoted following to new Holmes pastiches. A recent reimagining was penned by Abdul-Jabbar centering on Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older, smarter brother. And has become a series of three. I highly recommend the tales. A chilling opening set in 1870 Trinidad teases readers to learn who—or what—is killing the island’s children, draining their blood, and leaving behind bizarre backward-facing footprints. The mystery eventually comes to the attention of a 23-year-old Mycroft Holmes, who is secretary to the British Secretary of State for War, and who ends up traveling to the Caribbean to solve the crimes, aided by his black friend Cyrus Douglas, who was raised in Trinidad. ...

  He is best known for a number of novels showing Americans encountering Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from a character's point of view allowed him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators brought a new depth to narrative fiction. James was famous for his dexterous, somewhat long-winded phrases, both in his writings and in ‘real life.’ A famous anecdote survives which describes how James goes about asking directions from a passer-by while motoring through England with his good friend, Edith Wharton:  ‘”My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness hav...

    Eudora Welty was a prolific writer who created stories in multiple genres; an American short story writer and novelist who wrote about the American South. Throughout her writing are the recurring themes of the paradox of human relationships, the importance of place (a recurring theme in most Southern writing), and the importance of mythological influences that help shape the theme. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum. From the early 1930s, her photographs show Mississippi's rural poor and the effects of the Great Depression. Collections of her photographs were published as One Time, One Place (1971) and Photographs (1989). Welty's debut novel, The Robber Bridegroom (1942), deviated from her previous psychologically-inclined works, presenting static, fairy-tale characters. Some critics suggest th...

  One of my all-time favorite children’s authors.  I used to read her to the third graders and then the library couldn’t keep up with the readers for her books. After a few years of making recommendations and performing live storytelling in her role as a librarian, Cleary decided to start writing children's books about characters that young readers could relate to. Cleary has said, “I believe in that ‘missionary spirit’ among children’s librarians. Kids deserve books of literary quality, and librarians are so important in encouraging them to read and selecting books that are appropriate.” DID YOU KNOW: Beverly Cleary helped improve the Leave It to Beaver franchise. Cleary once wrote a pair of original Leave It to Beaver tie-in stories starring Wally and The Beav which, according to several letters she received, many fans found much more enjoyable than the series’ film adaptation. (Her explanation? “I cut out dear old Dad’s philosophizing.”) OR THIS: Beverly Cleary had a theo...

Paul Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best-known work is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Theroux published his first novel, Waldo (1967), during his time in Uganda; it was moderately successful. He published several more novels over the next few years, including Fong and the Indians and Jungle Lovers. On his return to Malawi many years later, he found that this latter novel, which was set in that country, was still banned. He recounted that in his book Dark Star Safari. After moving to London in 1972, Theroux set off on an epic journey by train from Great Britain to Japan and back. His account of this journey was published as The Great Railway Bazaar, his first major success as a travel writer and now a classic in the genre. He has since written a number of travel books, including traveling by train from Boston to Argentina (The Old Patagonian Express), walking around the United Kingdom (The Kingdom By The Sea), kayaking in the Sou...