Description

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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.

About the Author

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Alex Palmer is a journalist and excavator of fascinating facts. He is the author of the original Weird-o-Pedia as well as books of surprising tidbits including Happiness Hacks and Alternative Facts. He is also the New York Times best-selling author of The Santa Claus Man and his writing has appeared in Lifehacker, Best Life, Mental Floss, Slate, and Esquire.