The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes

Author: John Gross
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199543410
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes

Author: Donald Hall
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195033885
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
A companion volume to The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, this volume covers the whole range of American literary history from the 17th century to the present. Taken from biographies, letters, memoirs, and table-talk, the stories form an irreverent history of American literature.

Eurekas and Euphorias

Author: Walter Gratzer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198609407
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
A collection of fascinating stories, entertainingly told, revealing the human face of science. Eurekas and Euphorias encompasses some 200 anecdotes brilliantly illustrating scientists in all their shapes: the obsessive and the dilettantish, the genial, the envious, the preternaturally brilliant and the slow-witted who sometimes see further in the end, the open-minded and the intolerant, recluses and arrivistes. Told with wit and relish by Walter Gratzer, here are stories to delight, astonish, instruct, and most especially, entertain the general reader, scientist and non-scientist alike.

The Oxford Book of Exploration

Author: Robin Hanbury-Tenison
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0192805568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 595

Book Description
Selected by Robin Hanbury-Tenison, whom the Sunday Times called the 'greatest explorer of the last twenty years', this is a comprehensive anthology of the writings of explorers through the ages, now fully revised and updated. The ultimate in travel writing, these are the words of those who changed the world through their pioneering search for new lands, new peoples, and new experiences. Divided into geographical sections, the book takes us to Asia with Vasco da Gama, Francis Younghusband, and Wilfred Thesiger, to the Americas with John Cabot, Sir Francis Drake, and Alexander Von Humboldt, to Africa with Dr David Livingstone and Mary Kingsley, to the Pacific with Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook, and to the Poles with Robert Peary and Wally Herbert. Driven by a desire to discover that transcends all other considerations, the vivid writings of these extraordinary people reveal what makes them go beyond the possible and earn the right to be known as explorers.

The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes

Author: Clifton Fadiman
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0316084727
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1322

Book Description
A book compiled of anecdotes from other collections, arranged under the name of the person they're about.

Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes

Author: Andre Bernard
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0446931268
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 808

Book Description
From Hank Aaron to King Zog, Mao Tse-Tung to Madonna, Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes features more than 2,000 people from around the world, past and present, in all fields. These short anecdotes provide remarkable insight into the human character. Ranging from the humorous to the tearful, they span classical history, recent politics, modern science and the arts. Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes is a gold mine for anyone who gives speeches, is doing research, or simply likes to browse. As an informal tour of history and human nature at its most entertaining & instructive, this is sure to be a perennial favorite for years to come.

Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century;

Author: John Nichols
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 818

Book Description

The Oxford Book of Death

Author: D. J. Enright
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199556520
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Book Description
The inescapable reality of death has given rise to much of literature's most profound and moving work. D. J. Enright's wonderfully eclectic selection presents the words of poet and novelist, scientist and philosopher, mystic and sceptic. And alongside these 'professional' writers, he allows the voices of ordinary people to be heard; for this is a subject on which there are no real experts and wisdom lies in many unexpected places.

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195092622
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 788

Book Description
This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.

Dear Mr. You

Author: Mary-Louise Parker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501107836
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
This book "renders the singular arc of a woman's life through letters Mary-Louise Parker composes to the men, real and hypothetical, who have informed the person she is today. Beginning with the grandfather she never knew, the letters range from a missive to the beloved priest from her childhood to remembrances of former lovers to an homage to a firefighter she encountered to a heartfelt communication with the uncle of the infant daughter she adopted"--