Dodger by Terry Pratchett

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DodgerTerry Pratchett, author of the Discworld novels,  leaves fantasy for a moment to write about Victorian England with Dodger.

As you might guess, the main character of the novel is  based on the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist.   Dodger is  a young adult who lives by his wits in London.  The story starts out on, pardon the cliché, a dark and stormy night …

A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors. Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not, because he’s . . . Dodger.

Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London’s sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He’s not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl—not even if her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

From Dodger’s encounter with the mad barber Sweeney Todd to his meetings with the great writer Charles Dickens and the calculating politician Benjamin Disraeli, history and fantasy intertwine in a breathtaking account of adventure and mystery.

Beloved and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett combines high comedy with deep wisdom in this tale of an unexpected coming-of-age and one remarkable boy’s rise in a complex and fascinating world.

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

Five Interesting Facts about Bram Stoker (1847 – 1912)

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Bram Stoker 1906Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula,  was born on November 8, 1847 and died on April 20, 1912.  Here are five quick facts about the author that you may not know:

1 – Although we may think of Stoker as being English, he was actually born in Clontarf, Ireland.  (Clontarf is a suburb of Dublin.)

2 – He was a sickly child and was bedridden for much of his first seven years.   However Stoker thrived after that.  He grew to be over six feet tall.  His red hair plus athletic build lead a biographer to refer to Stoker as a “red-haired giant.”

3 – An early romantic interest of Oscar Wilde was Florence Balcombe.  She eventually became the wife of Bram Stoker.

4 – Stoker was a late bloomer in terms of his writing career.  He didn’t publish Dracula until he was fifty years old.

5 – Speaking of Dracula, in the 1980s the original manuscript of the novel was found in a barn in Pennsylvania.  It revealed that Stoker considered calling the novel THE UN-DEAD.  I don’t know about you, but I like Dracula better.

Quotations by Bram Stoker

Novels by Bram Stoker

  • The Primrose Path
  • The Snake’s Pass
  • The Watter’s Mou’
  • The Shoulder of Shasta
  • Dracula
  • Miss Betty
  • The Mystery of the Sea
  • The Jewel of Seven Stars
  • The Man (a.k.a. The Gates of Life)
  • Lady Athlyne
  • The Lady of the Shroud
  • The Lair of the White Worm (a.k.a. The Garden of Evil)

 

Oz: The Great and Powerful

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I don’t know if I can wait until March of 2013. What am I talking about? That’s the release date for Oz: The Great and Powerful. The movie is based, of course, on the characters from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The movie is a a prequel to the happenings in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. So don’t expect to see Dorothy and Toto. Instead, Oz: The Great and Powerful tells how a man came to the land Oz and became the Wizard.



Quotes from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Just for Fun – Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders

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Gyles Brandreth writes a mystery series based on the fictional adventures of Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders is the fifth book in the series.

Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders opens in 1892, as an exhausted Arthur Conan Doyle retires to a spa in Germany with a suitcase full of fan mail. But his rest cure does not go as planned. The first person he encounters is Oscar Wilde, and the two friends make a series of macabre discoveries among the letters—a finger; a lock of hair; and, finally, an entire severed hand.

The trail leads the intrepid duo to Rome, and to a case that involves miracles as well as murder. Pope Pius IX has just died—these are uncertain times in the Eternal City. To uncover the mystery and discover why the creator of Sherlock Holmes has been summoned in this way, Wilde and Conan Doyle must penetrate the innermost circle of the Catholic Church and expose the deadly secrets of the six men closest to the pope.

Sandy Strikes LitQuotes

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LitQuotesSome of you might have noticed that LitQuotes was down overnight.  While I’m located on the West Coast, some of the  servers that power the site are in the Boston area.   “Super-Storm” Sandy caused power outages and that caused the service disruption.   Thanks to the folks at ICDSoft for all their great work in bringing us back online.

Conan Doyle on NPR

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Recently I wrote about the publication of the diary Conan Doyle kept while working as ship’s surgeon aboard the whaling vessel, Hope.  Recently NPR interviewed Jon Lellenberg, one of the book’s editors.   You can listen to the entire interview and see photos from the book at NPR – From Ship To Sherlock: Doyle’s ‘Arctic’ Diary

 Buy Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure


Surprise! Edith Wharton Wrote Ghost Stories!

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Did you know that Edit Wharton wrote ghost stories?  I certainly didn’t. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton.

Here’s what Amazon says about the book:

 Amongst the many supernatural treats within these pages you will encounter a married farmer bewitched by a dead girl; a ghostly bell which saves a woman’s reputation; the weird spectral eyes which terrorise the midnight hours of an elderly aesthete; the haunted man who receives letters from his dead wife; and the frightening power of a doppelganger which foreshadows a terrible tragedy.

Noteworthy Link – Oscar Wilde in America

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Noteworthy Link

Recently I posted Ten Interesting Facts about Oscar Wilde.  One of the facts talked about his trip to the United States.  Imagine my surprise to find a whole website dedicated to the event.

Oscar Wilde in America has photos, Wilde’s itinerary, newspaper clippings and, because it is Oscar Wilde after all,  there’s a section of witty things that Wilde said during his trip.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever. ~ Oscar Wilde

10 Interesting Facts About Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde


What you Probably Know

Oscar Wilde was an Irish author, playwright and poet. He’s remembered for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray as well was other works. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s.  He was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin.  He died on November 30, 1900 in Paris.

 What you May Not Know
  1. His full name was Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.
  2. His father, William Wilde, was an acclaimed doctor.  He was knighted for his work as medical adviser for the Irish censuses.  William Wilde founded St. Mark’s Ophthalmic Hospital to treat the city’s poor.
  3. An early romantic interest of Oscar Wilde was Florence Balcombe.  She eventually became the wife of Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula.
  4. In 1882 Wilde began a lecture tour of North America. The subject was Aestheticism, a movement that celebrated beauty and art.   During the tour Wilde meet with some of the leading American literary figures of the day, including Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Walt Whitman.
  5. Wilde  married Constance Lloyd on May 29, 1884.  The couple had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.
  6. In 1891 Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas.   They became lovers.  Alfred’s father was  John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry.  The elder Douglas did not approve of his son’s relationship.  Feuding between John Douglas and Wilde eventually led to Wilde being convicted of “gross indecency” for homosexual acts.  Wilde was sentenced to  two years of hard labor.
  7. Despite Wilde’s preference for men and the social scandal caused by his trial and imprisonment, Wilde and his wife never divorced.  However Constance did change her and her sons’ last name to Holland.
  8. After his release from prison in 1897 Wilde left England and  moved to France.  He stayed there until his death.
  9. Wilde wrote plays and short stories, but only one novel.  His only novel is The Picture of Dorian Gray.
  10. Wilde died of meningitis on November 30, 1900. He was only 46 years old.

Novel by Oscar Wilde

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Partial List of Short Stories by Oscar Wilde

  • Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories (1891) Including The Canterville Ghost first published in periodical form in 1887.

Partial List of Plays by Oscar Wilde

  • The Duchess of Padua (1883)
  • Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)
  • A Woman of No Importance (1893)
  • An Ideal Husband (1895)
  • The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Quotes by Oscar Wilde