Portal:Literature/Did you know
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This page contains all DYK's of a year.
Today is November 19, 2006, week number 46.
- Week 1 (edit)
... that Urmuz (pictured) was an early 20th century Romanian writer of absurdist and avant-garde prose?
... that Der Untertan, a novel by Heinrich Mann completed in 1914, is a critique of the German Empire under William II?
... that in rhetoric, anaphora (from the Greek ἀναφορά "carrying back") is the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of several consecutive sentences or verses to emphasize an image or a concept?
... that Manhattan Transfer was a New Jersey railroad station from 1910 until 1937, is the title of a 1925 novel by John Dos Passos, and the name of an American vocal group founded in the 1970s?
... that Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith also wrote novels, for instance A Tenured Professor (1990)?
... that "Nemo solus satis sapit" (roughly translated as "On your own, you never know enough") is a quotation from Plautus's play Miles Gloriosus, and that Miles Gloriosus appears again in Stephen Sondheim's 1962 musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
... that Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb were recurring characters in Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator of 1711-12?
- Week 2 (edit)
... that Jean le Rond d'Alembert, André Le Breton, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Denis Diderot, Baron d'Holbach, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire were among the contributors to the 35 volume Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (pictured)?
... that Liza of Lambeth was W. Somerset Maugham's debut novel?
... that Titania is the queen of the fairies in William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream?
... that "The Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States at the time of its publication; that the phrase derives from the title of an essay by John William DeForest published in 1869; and that William Carlos Williams, Clyde Brion Davis, and Philip Roth have actually written novels entitled The Great American Novel?
... that Ars longa, vita brevis" is is part of an aphorism by Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and that it refers to the art of medicine?
... that both Truffaut's La Sirène du Mississippi (1969) and Michael Cristofer's Original Sin (2001) are based on Cornell Woolrich's 1947 novel, Waltz into Darkness, a historical novel set in turn-of-the century New Orleans?
... that Racing Demon is a 1990 play by David Hare about the Church of England?
- Week 3 (edit)
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- Week 23 (edit)
... that Sydney Horler and Michael Arlen were two bestselling novelists of the 1920s?
... that T. C. Boyle has written a novel about marijuana farmers, Budding Prospects?
... that Petrified Forest National Park, the setting of Robert E. Sherwood's 1935 stage play The Petrified Forest, is located in northeastern Arizona, and that Humphrey Bogart successfully played the role of escaped killer Duke Mantee on Broadway?
... that Psychodrama is a method of psychotherapy which explores, through action, the problems of people, and that it was developed by Romanian psychiatrist Jacob L. Moreno?
... that Shakespeare's Sonnet CXXXVIII is about two lovers lying to, and with, each other?
... that Cunt (1999) is a controversial novel by Stewart Home?
... that the Verfremdungseffekt is usually associated with Bertolt Brecht's "epic theatre"?
- Week 24 (edit)
... that a recurring theme in Eric Ambler's books is having as the main character an amateur who finds himself unwillingly in the company of hardened criminals and/or spies?
... that the title of Bernard MacLaverty's short story about a philosophy don, "Language, Truth and Lockjaw", is an allusion to A. J. Ayer's 1936 seminal work of philosophy, Language, Truth, and Logic? [1]
... that the clerihew was invented by E. C. Bentley?
... that a proscenium arch is a square frame around a raised stage area in traditional theatres which represents a style of theatre which has persisted since the 17th century but has become an almost derogatory term to many modern dramatists?
... that Moral is a 1909 comedy by Bavarian author Ludwig Thoma?
... that the dictum, "Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur", is ascribed to 1st century Roman satirist Petronius?
... that Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a 1969 book by Charles Bukowski, and that his creation — some say alter ego — Henry Chinaski has been ranked among the 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900?
- Week 25 (edit)
... that Lord Byron (pictured) fought for Greek independence, and that he died at Messolonghi (Μεσολόγγι) in 1824?
... that Otto von Freising, son of Leopold III, Margrave of Austria and brother of Henry II Jasomirgott, Duke of Austria, was an important mediaeval chronicler?
... that an aside is a technique used in dramatic performances in which a character says something to himself or herself which is assumed to be unheard by the other characters on stage?
... that in Chuck Palahniuk's 2001 novel Choke, the protagonist regularly deceives people by pretending to be choking on food?
... that one of the events at the Wartburgfest of 1817 was a book burning?
... that Clara is a wheelchair-bound girl in Johanna Spyri's children's story, Heidi (1880)?
... that the chapter entitled "What is an American?" is the most famous, and most anthologized, part of Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer?
- Week 26 (edit)
... that the Index Librorum Prohibitorum is a list of banned books?
... that the title of Ethel Lina White's first crime novel, Put Out the Light (1931), is a quotation from Othello? ("Put out the Light, and then put out the Light: If I quench thee, thou flaming Minister, [...])
... that Vladimir Nabokov once described Boris Pasternak as "Emily Dickinson in trousers"?
... that gonzo journalism is a style of reporting associated with Hunter S. Thompson?
... that "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is an elegy written by Walt Whitman shortly after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln?
... that Martin Luther translated the Bible into German to make it more accessible to the common people?
... that U.S. actor Eddie Constantine played Peter Cheyney's hard-boiled detective Lemmy Caution in a series of French B-movies, starting with La Môme vert-de-gris (1953)?
- Week 27 (edit)
... that Ionesco's La cantatrice chauve has become one of the most performed plays in France?
... that Austrian dramatist and novelist Peter Handke was nominated for the Heinrich Heine Prize 2006 but that his alleged support for Slobodan Milošević has led to a heated controversy?
... that deliberate misspellings are quite common in limericks?
... that between 1942 and 1944 Anne Frank kept a diary?
... that Wildwechsel, Stallerhof and Oberösterreich are stage plays by Franz Xaver Kroetz?
... that Shmelka Glickstein, Augie March, Duddy Kravitz and Alexander Portnoy are four fictional heroes growing up Jewish in North America?
... that Michael Frayn has written a Fleet Street novel, Towards the End of the Morning?
- Week 28 (edit)
... that the "12.30 from Croydon" is an aircraft rather than a train?
... that Heinrich Böll's 1963 novel Ansichten eines Clowns (The Clown) deals with German people's inability, during the Wirtschaftswunder years, to come to terms with their Nazi past?
... that Jacques Derrida used Charles Baudelaire's short tale "La fausse monnaie" as the starting point for his book, Donner le temps (1991)?
... that Hay-on-Wye in Brecknockshire, Wales was the first book town?
... that the Heimskringla contains tales about Norwegian kings, and that it was written around 1225 by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson?
... that the screenplay for Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956) was written by Tennessee Williams, and that Karl Malden and Eli Wallach again appeared together on the screen more than 30 years later, in Martin Ritt's Nuts?
... that Leonard Cohen has written two novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers?
- Week 29 (edit)
... that Washington Irving wrote the travelogue Astoria about an expedition sponsored by John Jacob Astor which culminated in the founding of Astoria, Oregon, without having taken part in the journey himself?
... that quite a number of literary works revolve around class reunions?
... that Margaret Atwood's 1972 novel Surfacing is set in the Canadian wilderness, and that it was made into a movie in 1981 starring Kathleen Beller?
... that in Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" an unsuspecting man is walled in alive somewhere in the catacombs below Venice, Italy?
... that Roger McGough is a British performance poet who was a member of The Scaffold?
... that pastiche is a literary technique employing a generally light-hearted tongue-in-cheek imitation of another's style?
... that Otakar II, king of Bohemia of the Přemyslid dynasty, and Rudolph of Habsburg are two characters in Franz Grillparzer's historical tragedy König Ottokars Glück und Ende (1823)?
- Week 30 (edit)
... that The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1900) is an opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov based on the 1831 poem The Tale of Tsar Saltan by Aleksandr Pushkin?
... that Ludwig Anzengruber's breakthrough play, Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (1870), is about a Roman Catholic parish priest accused of having an inappropriate relationship with his household help, and that it was filmed in 1955 starring Erich Auer and Waltraut Haas?
... that "The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils" is the first line of Enoch Powell's famous "Rivers of Blood" speech?
... that Gerald Lund, Anita Stansfield and Jack Weyland write LDS fiction?
... that Quasimodo, the protagonist of Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris, is named after the first Sunday after Easter ("quasi modo geniti infantes")?
... that Owen Meany believes that the purpose of his life is being an instrument of God, and that that purpose will be fulfilled in his own death?
... that Dr Stephen Ward, Robert E. Lee, Cardinal Richelieu and Caligula are just four of the many historical personages who appear in fictional context?
- Week 31 (edit)
... that T. C. Boyle's new novel, Talk Talk, is about identity theft?
... that Abha Dawesar, Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, R. K. Narayan (pictured), and Vikram Seth are Indian novelists writing in English?
... that Monstrous Regiment was a British feminist theatre company during the 1970s and 1980s which took its name from the 16th century misogynist tract by John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women?
... that Frankenstein is the name of the scientist rather than the monster he created?
... that Black Mask was a U.S. pulp magazine which appeared from 1920 till 1951, and that among its contributors were Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler?
... that the Stonewall Book Award is named after the Stonewall riots of 1969?
... that "A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdome for a Horse" is a line taken from the ending of Shakespeare's Richard III?
- Week 32 (edit)
... that the Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497, preached by Girolamo Savonarola, consumed pornography, lewd pictures, pagan books, gaming tables, cosmetics, copies of Boccaccio's Decameron, and all the works of Ovid which could be found in Florence?
... that in the novel The Rule of Four two students are trying to solve the mystery contained within an extremely rare, beautifully decorated and very mysterious (real) book — the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili?
... that an incunabulum (pictured) is a book, single sheet, or image that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe?
... that bibliophilia is the love of books, not a reference to the Bible?
... that the early libraries located in monastic cloisters and associated with scriptoria were collections of lecterns with books chained to them?
... that the Haskell Free Library and Opera House is sometimes called "The only library in America with no books"?
... that novelty, improvisation, self-expression, and blinding inspiration are not neoclassical virtues; neoclassicism exhibits perfect control of an idiom?
- Week 33 (edit)
... that the only known sketch of an Elizabethan playhouse (pictured) was made in 1596 by a Dutch traveller, Johannes de Witt, and that it shows The Swan?
... that George Wylie Henderson's 1935 novel, Ollie Miss, is set in rural Alabama, and that it is almost an all-black story, with only two minor characters — the doctor and the sheriff — being white?
... that Clivia is an operetta by Charles Amberg (story, lyrics) and Nico Dostal (music) set in the fictitious South American country of Boliguay, and that it premiered in Berlin in 1933?
... that Venice Preserv'd is a Restoration tragedy by Thomas Otway?
... that "Nemo me impune lacessit" is the royal Scottish motto, and that this phrase also occurs in Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado"?
... that the 19th century advocates of l'art pour l'art believed that art should be created and appreciated for its own sake, that it should be an end in itself rather than a means to an end?
... that in Aristophanes's 411 BC comedy, Lysistrata calls for a sex strike to make the Greek warriors stop fighting, and that in reaction to the Iraq disarmament crisis the play was the focus of a peace protest initiative called The Lysistrata Project?
- Week 34 (edit)
... that Shangri-La, the name chosen by F.D. Roosevelt for what is today known as Camp David, takes its name from the 1933 Utopian novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton?
... that Rupert Brooke (pictured), author of the sonnet "The Soldier" (1915), died of pneumonia in the Aegean Sea on his way to the Battle of Gallipoli, and that he was buried in the Greek island of Skyros?
... that, amongst others, actors Kinya Aikawa, Bruno Cremer, Gino Cervi, Rupert Davies, Jean Gabin, Michael Gambon, Richard Harris, Charles Laughton, Pierre Renoir, Jean Richard, and Heinz Rühmann have all portrayed Georges Simenon's Commissaire Jules Maigret?
... that Ravelstein (2000) is Saul Bellow's final novel, and that the author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976?
... that I promessi sposi, a historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni first published in 1827, is considered the most famous and widely read novel of the Italian language?
... that during performances of The Rocky Horror Show audience participation is invited — that the audience are encouraged to dress up as the characters, to shout call-backs at the stage ("arsehole", "slut", etc.), and to throw props onto the stage?
... that the current governor of Lower Austria, Erwin Pröll, once stated in an interview that the only book he had ever finished reading was Karl May's 1890 novel Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure of Silver Lake)?
- Week 35 (edit)
... that the Roman de la Rose is a late mediæval French poem about love and courtship, and that it was translated into Middle English — partly by Geoffrey Chaucer — as The Romaunt of the Rose (pictured)?
... that New York-born Anna Katharine Green was one of the first U.S. writers of detective fiction, and that her works inspired Agatha Christie to become a mystery writer?
... that Glenway Wescott's novel Apartment in Athens is set in Nazi-occupied Greece?
... that in the English-speaking world a matinée is the showing of a play in the afternoon, whereas in German-speaking countries the same word denotes a performance which takes place before noon?
... that Steven Berkoff's play Decadence was filmed in 1994 starring Joan Collins and the author himself, who also directed the movie?
... that Marsha Hunt was born in Philadelphia, was a member of the cast in the London production of the musical Hair, had a daughter, Karis, by Mick Jagger, published her first novel, Joy, in 1990, and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004?
... that the plot of Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis's 1993 movie Groundhog Day shows striking parallels to Ken Grimwood's 1987 time travel novel Replay?
- Week 36 (edit)
... that Anna Akhmatova (Russian: А́нна Ахма́това, pictured) was an eminent Russian Acmeist poet whose works were banned from publication during Stalin's dictatorship?
... that Le Malade imaginaire, first performed in 1673, is Molière's final play?
... that "Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans" is a song by Noel Coward written and released during the Second World War as part of his contribution to the war effort?
... that Ivan Cankar is considered the most famous Slovenian writer, and that his 1904 novel Hiša Marije Pomočnice (The Ward of Our Lady of Mercy) is about a group of terminally ill girls awaiting their deaths in a hospital in fin de siècle Vienna?
... that Jeff Abbott, John le Carré, Manning Coles, James Munro, and Daniel Silva are authors of spy fiction?
... that the Goethe-Institut, founded in 1925 to promote German language and culture outside of the German-speaking countries, is named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
... that, as one critic put it, "some of the descriptions of the sex scenes" in Ben Elton's Past Mortem "might prove a bit much for the faint-hearted"?
- Week 37 (edit)
... that "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat" and "We shall fight on the beaches" are two famous wartime speeches by Sir Winston Churchill (pictured)?
... that Wozzeck is an opera by Alban Berg based on Georg Büchner's stage play Woyzeck?
... that "Most near, most dear, most loved and most far" is the first line of George Barker's sonnet "To My Mother" [2], which was first published in his 1944 volume of poetry Eros in Dogma and later anthologized in the Faber Book of Modern Verse?
... that the "New Woman" was a feminist ideal which emerged in the final decades of the 19th century in Europe and North America, and that H. G. Wells's Ann Veronica (1909) — "this poisonous book", according to The Spectator — is one of the classic New Woman novels?
... that Richard Brautigan is best known for his 1967 novel, Trout Fishing in America?
... that the theme of adultery features in a wide range of literature through the ages?
... that Frozen is a 2004 stage play by Bryony Lavery focusing on the conversations between a serial killer, the mother of one of his victims, and a female psychiatrist?
- Week 38 (edit)
... that Toni Morrison, Elena Castedo and A. L. Kennedy (pictured) have all written novels entitled Paradise?
... that "Death of the Author" is an influential 1968 essay by Roland Barthes in which he maintains that the reader must separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate it from interpretive tyranny?
... that the British Museum Reading Room used to be the main reading room of the British Library until the library moved to St Pancras in 1997?
... that Shockheaded Peter is a musical entertainment based on 19th century German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann's children's book, Der Struwwelpeter (1845)?
... that, with the exception of A House and Its Head, Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels have been out of print for some time?
... that "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" is the first line of Philip Larkin's short poem "This Be The Verse"?
... that Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton has written a play about Oscar Wilde, Saint Oscar?
- Week 39 (edit)
... that Sholom Aleichem (Yiddish: שלום־עליכם, Russian: Шолом-Алейхем; pictured) was a popular humorist and Russian Jewish author of Yiddish literature, and that the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof is based on his short stories?
... that "Suspension of disbelief" is a term coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (1817), and that it refers primarily to the willingness of a reader or viewer to accept the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible?
... that Terry Southern is the author of the 1959 episodic novel, The Magic Christian?
... that Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, Huxley's Island, Barth's Giles Goat-Boy, Bradbury's The History Man, and Naipaul's A Bend in the River are five of the novels selected by Anthony Burgess for his 1984 book, Ninety-nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939: A Personal Choice?
... that Madame Bovary commits suicide by swallowing arsenic?
... that the musical White Horse Inn was originally conceived as a play without music?
... that "cult fiction" is an umbrella term for books that tend to attract a cult following — including banned books, transgressive fiction, controversial books, erotic literature, and genre fiction?
- Week 40 (edit)
... that Walter Mosley's Futureland is a series of nine loosely connected short pieces of science fiction set in a post-cyberpunk dystopian universe populated by humans living in a shellshocked, unfairly stratified society overseen by super-rich technocrats?
... that "The Computer Nevermore" is a filk based on Edgar Allan Poe's narrative poem "The Raven", and that that poem has been parodied countless times?
... that Dorothy B. Hughes's 1946 roman noir Ride the Pink Horse is set in a small New Mexican town during a three-day fiesta, and that the title of the novel refers to a dilapidated merry-go-round?
... that the members of the Pérez family are Marielitos?
... that Austrian political journalist and cabaret writer Jura Soyfer, the co-author of the "Dachaulied", died of typhus at Buchenwald concentration camp, aged only 26?
... that roman de gare is the French term for "airport novel"?
... that John Guare's 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation is based on the "small world phenomenon"?
- Week 41 (edit)
... that Eugene O'Neill's (pictured) first published play, Beyond the Horizon, opened on Broadway in 1920, and that it is about two brothers who love the same woman?
... that a vanity press is a company which, while claiming to be a traditional publisher, prints books and charges writers a fee in return for publishing their books, with the intended market being the author him/herself rather than the general public?
... that Michener's The Drifters, Sutcliffe's Are You Experienced? and Garland's The Beach are novels about backpackers?
... that Biedermann und die Brandstifter is a play by Swiss writer Max Frisch, the author of the 1957 novel Homo Faber?
... that Yaakov Shabtai's Zichron Dvarim (זכרון דברים; English title: Past Continuous) about three friends in 1960s Tel Aviv was one of the first novels to be written in truly vernacular Hebrew?
... that Three Men in a Boat, first published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford, and that the book was originally intended to be a serious travel guide?
... that Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat quoted Horace's "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" immediately before his beheading on Tower Hill, London in 1747, and that during the First World War Wilfred Owen wrote a poem entitled "Dulce Et Decorum Est"?
- Week 42 (edit)
... that in August 2006 Nobel Prize laureate Günter Grass (pictured) admitted, 62 years after the fact, to having been a member of the Waffen-SS?
... that The Quare Fellow, a 1954 play by Brendan Behan (Breandán Ó Beacháin) about prison life in 1950s Ireland, was turned into a black-and-white film in 1962 starring Patrick McGoohan as a death-row prison guard with a growing empathy with two condemned prisoners?
... that Radetzkymarsch (Radetzky March) is a family saga by Joseph Roth first published in 1932 about the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and that the title of the novel refers to Johann Strauß's "Radetzky March"?
... that a bodice ripper is a genre of romantic fiction, often historical fiction, featuring unrestrained romantic passion and a heroine who initially dislikes and actively resists the hero's seduction, only ultimately to be overcome by desire?
... that "The devil take her!" is the last line of Sir John Suckling's poem "Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?"?
... that the 1982 stage play Die Antrittsrede der amerikanischen Päpstin (El Discurso inaugural de la Papisa americana) by Esther Vilar is set in the year 2022, where Pope Joan II holds her inaugural address sponsored by big money and interrupted by commercial breaks?
... that "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and "It Had to Be Murder" are just three of the many short stories which have been adapted into feature-length films?
- Week 43 (edit)
... that Bel Ami is an 1885 novel by Guy de Maupassant (pictured) about a journalist's rise to fame, which is achieved by means of a series of powerful, intelligent, and wealthy mistresses?
... that Maria Stuart is a play by Friedrich Schiller based on the life of Mary I of Scotland?
.... that "Because He Liked to Look At It" and "I Was There In The Room" are two of the Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, and that in each of the monologues the vagina is seen as a tool of female empowerment?
... that Constantine P. Cavafy's 1911 poem "Απολείπειν ο θεός Αντώνιον" ("The God Abandons Antony") [3][4] is included in Lawrence Durrell's novel Justine, and that it also inspired Leonard Cohen to write "Alexandra Leaving"?
... that poetic justice is a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded and vice punished?
... that Nelson Algren's Somebody in Boots, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Louis L'Amour's Hanging Woman Creek are novels about hobos?
... that Freaky Green Eyes (2003), Sexy (2005), and After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (2006) are three young adult novels by Joyce Carol Oates?
- Week 44 (edit)
... that Monarch of the Glen is a BBC television drama loosely based on novels by Compton Mackenzie, but also an 1851 painting by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (pictured)?
... that Amanda Craig's novels about contemporary British society are linked to each other by recurring characters?
... that, according to Gustav Mahler, tradition is "the preservation of the flame, not the adoration of the ashes" ("Tradition ist die Weitergabe des Feuers und nicht die Anbetung der Asche")?
... that John Steinbeck's 1947 novel The Wayward Bus revolves around a bus accident, and that it has no clear protagonist?
... that John Dryden, Colley Cibber, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Sir John Betjeman were all poets laureate?
... that The Truth Machine is a 1996 science fiction novel by James L. Halperin about a genius who invents an infallible lie detector, and that the book can be freely downloaded?
... that Enkidu, Humbaba and Siduri are characters from the Epic of Gilgamesh?
- Week 45 (edit)
... that Psycho, a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock (pictured) in 1960 and remade by Gus Van Sant in 1998?
... that Print on demand (POD) is a publishing method in which a copy is not created until after an order is received?
... that British novelist Nina Bawden was badly injured and her husband killed in the Potters Bar rail crash of 2002?
... that from 1934, as a means of Gleichschaltung, all authors who wanted to publish their works in Nazi Germany had to be members of the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK), whose presidents were Hans-Friedrich Blunck (1934-35) and, from 1935, Hanns Johst ("Whenever I hear of culture ... I release the safety-catch of my Browning")?
... that Talking in Tongues (Pearson Award for Best New Play, 1991), Mules, and One Under are stage plays by British playwright Winsome Pinnock, and that she is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University?
... that Samuel French was a U.S. entrepreneur who, together with British actor, playwright and theatrical manager Thomas Hailes Lacy, pioneered in the field of theatrical publishing and the licensing of plays?
... that "Es grünt so grün, wenn Spaniens Blüten blühen" is the German rendering of "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain"?
- Week 46 (edit)
... that Annie John is a 1985 novel by Jamaica Kincaid (pictured) about a girl growing up in Antigua?
... that Ulrike Folkerts was the first woman at the Salzburg Festival to play the role of Death in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's version of Everyman, Jedermann?
... that Ronald Knox was both a theologian and a crime writer, and that Evelyn Waugh wrote his biography?
... that Merriam Modell was a U.S. author of pulp fiction, and that her novel Bunny Lake Is Missing was filmed by Otto Preminger starring Laurence Olivier and Noel Coward?
... that "The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations" is a descriptive list which was created by 19th century French writer Georges Polti to categorize every dramatic situation which might occur in a story or performance?
... that Zsigmond Móricz was a Hungarian novelist who wrote about the Hungarian peasantry and issues of poverty?
... that Animal Farm, The Pursuit of Love, Brideshead Revisited, and Cannery Row were all first published in 1945?
- Week 47 (edit)
... that Henry Denker's play about Sigmund Freud, A Far Country, premiered on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in 1961, and that Curd Jürgens (pictured) played Freud in a 1979 German language production at the Theater in der Josefstadt, Vienna?
... that Lawrence Ferlinghetti's best-known collection of poetry is entitled A Coney Island of the Mind?
... that Cordelia Grey, Kate Brannigan, Bertha Cool, V. I. Warshawski, Tally McGinnis (created by Nancy Sanra), and Precious Ramotswe are female private investigators?
... that Nils Holgersson is a boy who takes great delight in hurting the animals on his father's farm?
... that U.S. literary critic Leslie Fiedler was one of the first to question the notion of a gap between "high art" and popular art", in his 1972 book, Cross the Border—Close the Gap?
... that during her lifetime two plays were written about Mary Frith, an English pickpocket?
... that The Doors took their name from the title of a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, a phrase which was in turn borrowed from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?
- Week 48 (edit)
... that Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens was originally published in 19 monthly installments between October 1846 and April 1848?
... that Other Voices, Other Rooms is a 1948 novel by Truman Capote which is usually categorized as Southern Gothic?
... that Kim Novak (pictured, with George Sanders), Julia Foster, Robin Wright Penn, and Alex Kingston have all played Moll Flanders?
... that in 1993, looking back upon his career, Gore Vidal wrote that although he had "never seen Myra Breckinridge, I do know that despite the iconic presences of Raquel Welch and Mae West, the film was so bad that the book stopped selling for a decade"?
... that Miniplanner (2000), Babyji (2005) and That Summer in Paris (2006) are novels by Abha Dawesar, an Indian novelist writing in English?
... that morality plays are a type of theatrical allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a Godly life over one of evil?
... that René is a short novella by Chateaubriand about a desperately unhappy young Frenchman who seeks refuge among the Natchez people of Louisiana?
- Week 49 (edit)
... that in 1955 Barbara Bel Geddes (pictured) played Maggie in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
... that Syrup, Jennifer Government, and Company are novels by Max Barry?
... that Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City is about the lives and careers of the residents of 28 Barbary Lane, San Francisco?
.. that at the end of Act One of G. B. Shaw's 1910 play, Misalliance, an aircraft crashes through the roof of the conservatory of a large country house in Hindhead, Surrey, where a varied group of people have gathered to spend a summer weekend?
... that the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre is situated in Guildford, Surrey?
... that Françoise Sagan wrote Bonjour Tristesse when she was only 18, and that another of her novels, Aimez-vous Brahms?, was filmed as Goodbye Again in 1961 by Anatole Litvak starring Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, and Yves Montand?
... that, according to Alexander Pope ("An Essay on Criticism", 1711), "Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread"?
- Week 50 (edit)
... that a scene from I ... comme Icare, a 1979 political thriller by French playwright and filmmaker Henri Verneuil, depicts the Milgram experiment?
... that Goodbye to All That is Robert von Ranke Graves's (pictured) 1929 autobiography, in which he details his experiences of the First World War, including trench warfare, as well as his aversion to an England dominated by middle-class morality?
... that in classical scholarship, editio princeps is the first printed edition of a work which previously existed only in manuscripts?
... that Amazon Marketplace is amazon.com's fixed-price online marketplace that allows sellers to purvey new and used items alongside amazon's offerings, and customers to buy those items directly from the third party sellers using amazon.com's infrastructure?
... that in Werner Schwab's 1990 play Die Präsidentinnen, Mariedl is the woman who is used to cleaning toilets without wearing protective gloves, and that she tells her two female friends how the vicar hides presents for her—perfume, a bottle of beer, a can of goulash—deep down in the jammed toilet?
... that mock-heroic works are typically satires or parodies that mock common Romantic or modern stereotypes of heroes, including being unusually brave, mighty and great in all respects?
... that Marcel Pagnol wrote his first play aged 15 although his mother had not allowed him to touch a book until he was six for fear of "cerebral explosion"?
- Week 51 (edit)
... that a nativity play is a play about the birth of Jesus, usually one performed by children at Christmas time?
... that $crooge McDuck (pictured) is named after Ebenezer Scrooge?
... that the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas", also known as "The Night Before Christmas" from its first line, first published in 1823, is largely responsible for the contemporary American conception of Santa Claus, including his appearance, the night he visits, his method of transportation, the number and names of his reindeer, and that he brings toys to children?
... that "Silent Night, Holy Night" is a Christmas carol by Franz Xaver Gruber and Josef Mohr first performed in German at Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria during Midnight Mass on Christmas Day, 1818?
... that Alan Ayckbourn's 1980 play Season's Greetings is about a disastrous family reunion over the Christmas holidays characterized by hard drinking, adultery, and general hostility towards each and everyone, and that Floridian author Roger C. Simmons has written a novel, ReUnion, about a very similar subject-matter?
... that Harry's Christmas is a 90 minute monologue by Steven Berkoff about loneliness, depression, and suicide?
... that there have been countless Christmas specials on American and British television?
- Week 52 (edit)
... that "Sapere aude!" ("Dare to know!") is a Latin phrase famously used by Kant at the end of the first paragraph of his 1784 essay, "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" (pictured)?
... that Altruria was a short-lived commune in Sonoma County, California based on Christian socialist principles and inspired by William Dean Howells's 1894 Utopian novel, A Traveler from Altruria?
... that David Guterson's novel Snow Falling on Cedars is set in 1954 in the fictional San Piedro Island off the Washington coast in the Pacific Northwest, and that it is about Japanese American internment during World War II?
... that Grendel is a monster defeated barehandedly by Beowulf when the latter succeeds in ripping his arm off in a brawl, causing him to bleed to death in his gloomy cave home?
... that "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 as an example of a sentence whose grammar is correct but whose meaning is nonsensical?
... that, in British English, a ticket tout is someone who engages in ticket resale?
... that George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Hubert Bland, Edith Nesbit, Sydney Olivier, and Emmeline Pankhurst were all Fabians?
