We all know that sequels can be a problem. Especially if your first novel happens to have been "Catch-22", breathtaking and one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century. Millions of copies sold and a phrase added to the language! The Big Read by the BBC ranked Catch-22 as number 11 on a web poll of the UK's best-loved book. The Observer listed Catch-22 as one of the 100 greatest... Read More
“Catch-22” is a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller, the son of poor Jewish parents. Heller wanted to be a writer from an early age. His experiences as a bombardier during World War II inspired Catch-22. While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, fell madly in love with him." Within the ne... Read More
There's a reason why Pygmalion's been turned into a movie, a musical, and a movie musical. Shaw wrote the play in early 1912 and read it to famed actress Mrs Patrick Campbell in June. She came on board almost immediately, but her mild nervous breakdown contributed to the delay of a London production. Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913, in a German translatio... Read More
Jane Austen, for some, is simply the supreme English novelist, on any list. Some will say: she is the greatest. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Of... Read More
Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of modern fiction - 'the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and circulating libraries'". Yet her rejection of these genres is complex, as evidenced by Northanger Abbey and Emma. Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, in 1803. However... Read More
O. Henry's work is wide-ranging, and his characters can be found everywhere. The Cop and the Anthem has only one character who is given a name, the protagonist "Soapy." Furthermore, no last name is given. It is made clear that Soapy is homeless, a member of the substantial army of and women who flocked to New York City during the earliest years of the twentieth century. When it's warm, Soapy li... Read More
Few people are familiar with the name William Sydney Porter, but, just as many remember Mark Twain and not Samuel L. Clemens, Porter is well known by the pen name O. Henry. He was living the routine life of a young pharmacist who dazzled people with his artistic drawing ability, creativity that successfully translated into literature. During his most prolific years, O. Henry was compared to the... Read More
An American short story writer William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry, was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Porter used a number of pen names in the early part of his writing career. Nevertheless, the name "O. Henry" seemed to garner the most attention from editors and the public, and was used exclusively by Porter for his writing by about 1902. T... Read More
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist and playwright, who was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". Also, he was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. During the 15 years following the WWII, Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays: En attendant Godot, Fin... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English satirical novelist, best known for his Wilt series, as well as Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape. He was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge and did his National Service in the Marines before going to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. His childhood was influenced by Nazi ideology,... Read More
“The man who said the pen was mightier than the sword ought to have tried reading The Mill on the Floss to Motor Mechanics.” Tom Sharpe was writing what are very possibly the funniest novels in English today. He was born in Holloway, London, and brought up in Croydon. Sharpe's father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was a Unitarian minister who was active in far-right politics in the 1930... Read More
Thomas Ridley Sharpe was an English satirical novelist. His father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was chairman of the Acton and Ealing branch of The Link, and a member of the Nordic League. He declared that he hated Jews "in the sense that he hated all corruption". Sharpe initially shared some of his father's views but was horrified on seeing films of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English satirical author, born in London and educated at Lancing College and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Wilt on High is the third outing for Henry Wilt, bilious lecturer and Head of Liberal Studies at the Fenland College of Arts and Technology. Same struggles, same problems… But the even tenor of his days is rudely interrupted when the shadow of drug dealing flickers acro... Read More
Tom Sharpe, who has died aged 85, did not start writing comic novels until 1971 when he was 43, but once he got going he gained a large readership. Wilt in Nowhere is the fourth in the series of novels about hapless polytechnic lecturer Henry Wilt, his wife Eva, and their incorrigible four little girls, now aged 14, at convent school and bubbling over with an unhealthy interest in all things se... Read More
Tom Sharpe was an English bestselling novelist whose savagely satirical black comedies attacked the injustice of apartheid and the absurdities of academic life. Sharpe was educated at Bloxham School. He then was accepted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read history and social anthropology. In 1951, Tom Sharpe moved to South Africa, where he worked as a social worker and a teacher, befo... Read More
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, and a sequence of novels and films beginning with the life of a thirtysomething singleton in London trying to make sense of life and love. She was part of the screenwriting team on the associated movies. Bridget Jones begins the year with a set of resolutions dedicated to... Read More
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter. She worked for many years in London as a newspaper and TV journalist, travelling as wildly and as often as possible to Africa, India and Central America. She is the author of four novels: Cause Celeb, Bridget Jones’ s Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, and co-wrote the screenplays for... Read More
Helen Fielding is the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries. She also won British Book of the Year award for Bridget Jones’s Diary. She received her early education from Wakefield Girls High School and then she went on to major in English from St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Moreover, she performed... Read More
Sophie Kinsella is the author of the bestselling Shopaholic series, as well as The Undomestic Goddess and Can You Keep a Secret? She has sold over 40 million copies of her books in more than 60 countries, and she has been translated into over 40 languages. Sophie Kinsella first hit the UK bestseller lists in September 2000 with her first novel The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic. The book’s h... Read More
Sophie Kinsella is a writer and former financial journalist. She is the worldwide bestselling author of the Shopaholic series, Surprise Me, My Not So Perfect Life, Can You Keep a Secret?,The Undomestic Goddess, Remember Me?, Twenties Girl, I've Got Your Number and Wedding Night. Her novels have been translated into over forty languages, and Confessions of a Shopaholic, the first novel in the... Read More