Writing ‘Rudolph’: The Original Red-Nosed Manuscript From NPR comes a delightful tale of how Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, came to be, first in a story, then in a song, and finally in a movie. Sherlock Holmes stories enter public domain in U.S. A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Dr. John […]
Robert McCloskey Sketches for “Make Way for Ducklings” Born in 1914 in Hamilton, Ohio, Robert McCloskey came to Boston to attend the now-defunct Vesper George Art School. He left to live in New York for a time and established a career as an author and illustrator in the late 1930s. Over the years, he became
The manuscripts of Emily Dickinson have long been scattered across multiple archives, meaning scholars had to knock on numerous doors to see all the handwritten drafts of a poet whose work went almost entirely unpublished in her lifetime. The online Emily Dickinson Archive, to be inaugurated on Wednesday, promises to change all that by bringing
Opening of the Online Emily Dickinson Archive Read More »
Meet Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature The big literary news of last week was the announcement of Canadian writer Alice Munro as recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro is generally considered to be the current master of the short-fiction form. The announcement generated a lot of articles about Munro’s
Monday Miscellany: Big Literary News Edition Read More »
10 Impressive Uses of Borrowed Characters in Literature Kim Newman, whose latest book, Johnny Alucard, is out now, tells us: “In the Anno Dracula series, I’ve made use not only of characters and situations appropriated from Bram Stoker’s novel but a host of other preexisting fictional folk to populate the next-door-but-one world where Dracula defeated Van Helsing and
11 Required Reading Books You Should Re-Read Now That You’re Older Madeleine Crum thinks you’d benefit from rereading these books that you were probably required to struggle through in English classes while growing up. I have actually reread several of these in recent years, and I agree with her assessment that they have much more
Two Items on J. D. Salinger Two recent news items about J. D. Salinger, reclusive author of Catcher in the Rye: New biography of JD Salinger to be published this September An attempt to piece together the life of the notoriously reclusive Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger, researched over the course of eight
In ‘Alphabet’ Mysteries, ‘S’ Is Really For Santa Barbara It’s good to catch up with one of my favorite mystery writers, Sue Grafton, creator of private investigator Kinsey Millhone (rhymes with brimstone): The next book will be “W” Is for Wasted. Grafton promises “z” will be for “zero” — and after she finishes that one,
Little Libertarians on the prairie Christine Woodside argues that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, journalist Rose Wilder Lane, edited her mother’s reminiscences into books that project a Libertarian point of view: A close examination of the Wilder family papers suggests that Wilder’s daughter did far more than transcribe her mother’s pioneer tales: She shaped them and
There are a couple of sad stories about well known authors to report: Elmore Leonard, 87, has suffered a stroke Harper Lee, 87, is the victim of elder abuse But there is some good news about libraries and librarians: State of America’s Libraries Report 2013 Libraries and library staff continue to respond to the needs
