You can find a huge amount of information about famous writers - how they lived, how they created their immortal works. We want to bring to your attention interesting and unusual facts from life. famous writers. Reading interesting book, the reader usually does not think about the peculiarities of the character and lifestyle of the writer who wrote it, but some facts of his biography or the history of the creation of a particular book are sometimes very entertaining and even cause a smile.
One day at Francois Rabelais there was no money to get from Lyon to Paris. Then he prepared three bags with the inscriptions “Poison for the King”, “Poison for the Queen” and “Poison for the Dauphin” and left them in a visible place in the hotel room. Upon learning of this, the hotel owner immediately reported to the authorities. Rabelais was captured and convoyed to the capital directly to King Francis I so that he could decide the writer’s fate. It turned out that the packages contained sugar, which Rabelais immediately drank with a glass of water, and then told the king, with whom they were friends, how he solved his problem. 
Charles Dickens I drank half a liter of champagne every day. It all started when, in 1858, Dickens, in order to raise his popularity to a new level, decided to give lectures. His performances were extremely successful, and he traveled all over England and then went to America. And where there is a lecture, there is a subsequent meeting with readers! How can we live here without champagne? In addition, the writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head facing north. He also sat facing north when he wrote his great works. 
Franz Kafka was the most humble person. He practically did not publish everything that he wrote, but he always read it aloud to his three Prague friends. Being seriously ill, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works after his death, including several unfinished novels. Brod did not fulfill this request, but, on the contrary, ensured the publication of the works that brought Kafka worldwide fame. 
Ilf and Petrov They avoided cliché thoughts in a very original way. They discarded ideas that came to both of them at once. 
Marie-François Arouet (Voltaire) simultaneously wrote several works. Sitting down at his desk, depending on his mood, he took the manuscript and continued to work on it. 
Kir Bulychev- this is the final pseudonym of Vsevolod Mozheiko, but in general he changed them every month, especially when he worked in the magazine “Around the World”. He once signed himself "Sarah Fan" but was accused of anti-Semitism. We decided to simply put “S. Fan,” but this was considered an attack against the Korean people. Then Bulychev signed: “Ivan Shlagbaum.” 
Alexandre Dumas the father(1802-1870), whose green collection of works in fifteen volumes occupies bookshelves in many apartments, he did not write all these adventure novels himself. A whole staff of “literary blacks” worked for Dumas - at other times their number reached 70 people. More often than others, Dumas collaborated with the writer Auguste Macquet (1813-1888), who wrote, in particular, significant parts of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Montecristo. From the correspondence between Dumas and Macke it follows that the latter’s contribution to the beloved novels was very significant. 
Main plot immortal work N.V. Gogol“The Inspector General” was suggested to the author by A. S. Pushkin. These great classics were good friends. Once Alexander Sergeevich told Nikolai Vasilyevich an interesting fact from the life of the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province. It was this incident that formed the basis of the work of Nikolai Gogol. Throughout the time he was writing The Inspector General, Gogol often wrote to Pushkin about his work, told him what stage it was in, and also repeatedly announced that he wanted to quit it. However, Pushkin forbade him to do this, so “The Inspector General” was still completed. By the way, Pushkin, who was present at the first reading of the play, was completely delighted with it. 
The stable phrase “lost generation” came to us from the works Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's lost generation are young people who found themselves at the front at an early age (for Hemingway, primarily the period between the two world wars), often not yet graduating from school, undecided in life, but who began to kill early. After returning from the war, such people, morally or physically crippled, often could not adapt to peaceful life, many committed suicide, some went crazy. Also called the "Lost Generation" literary movement, which united such famous writers as Ham himself, James Joyce, Erich Maria Remarque, Henri Barbusse, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and others. 
Darya Dontsova, whose father was Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad grade, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev was not thinking about this at all!” 
Belarusian poet Adam Mickiewicz was also a science fiction writer. In the novel “The History of the Future,” he wrote about acoustic devices with the help of which, sitting by the fireplace, you can listen to concerts from the city, as well as about mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets. 
Honore de Balzac I wrote in the dark, so even during the day I closed the curtains and lit candles. Starting to work on a new piece, Balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and closed the shutters tightly so that no light could penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a robe, for 18 hours every day. 
U Lord Byron there were four pet geese that followed him everywhere, even at social gatherings. Despite being overweight and having a rather severe clubfoot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of his time. 
To his close relatives he was Ronald, to his school friends he was John Ronald. At Oxford University, where he first studied and then taught, he was called “Tollers.” It's about O John Ronald Rowan Tolkien. By the way, in Denmark there is The Tolkien Ensemble - an ensemble named after Tolkien. This is Danish Symphony Orchestra, performing musical plays based on the works of Tolkien. He has the support of Queen Margaret II, a great fan of Tolkien's books, who herself illustrates his books. 
Frankenstein- this is not the name of the famous monster at all. In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus“, which first saw the light in 1818, this very monster was simply called “Monster”. Victor Frankenstein was the name of a young student scientist from Geneva who created a living creature from non-living material. 
Mark Twain was a good inventor. Among his developments are a notebook with tear-off leaves for journalists, a wardrobe with sliding shelves, and also the most ingenious of his inventions - a tie-tying machine!
Real name Daniel Defoe, was not de Fo, indicating noble origin, but simply Fo. By the way, he wrote not just one book, but more than 300. Moreover, among his works there are a lot scientific works on history, economics, geography, as well as a series of books on demonology and magic. He even wrote a book about the history of the reign of Peter I. 
One of the most prolific writers of all times was a Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to “Dog in the Manger,” he wrote another 1,800 plays, all of them in verse. He never worked on a single play for more than 3 days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers. 
The life and work of the world's literary luminaries is rich in all sorts of interesting things. For example, Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov), industry (Karamzin), bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin), fade away (Dostoevsky), mediocrity (Severyanin), exhausted (Khlebnikov). In our library you can plunge into the fascinating world of masterpieces of world literature, as well as increase your erudition by becoming familiar with a lot of new information. We are waiting for you in our library! 
1. Once upon a time, a famous physicist had a chance to become the President of Israel. However, he refused this position with the caveat that he would not be able to decide state affairs due to their significance and scale.
2. Perhaps, while dying, Albert Einstein finally put forward another brilliant theory or said something equally significant. Alas, we will never know about this, since he died in the presence of a nurse who did not understand a word of German.
3. Last will The founder of the Nobel Prize was asked not to be considered a promoter of violence due to the fact that he invented dynamite.
4. Queen Anne of England was the mother of 17 children and outlived them all.
5. Elizabeth the First introduced a tax for those men who wore a beard.
6. She also passed a law obliging everyone, except very rich people, to wear special hats on Sunday.
7. One can only guess what happened during feasts before Catherine the First issued a law stating that no man had the right to get drunk during a feast before 21.00.
8. For her wedding, among other things, Queen Victoria received a “piece” of cheese weighing half a ton and three meters in diameter.
9. Lady Astor is credited with saying the following to Prime Minister Winston Churchill: “If you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee.” They say that a worthy answer was received to this: “If you were my wife, I would drink it.”
10. And the British Prime Minister himself smoked about 15 cigars a day.
11. The autograph of a famous Roman emperor is valued at $2 million. The problem is that no one has been able to find it yet.
12. Appearance laurel wreath on the head of Julius Caesar is associated with his attempt to hide the beginning of hair loss.
13. The loving Israeli king Solomon had about 700 wives and at least a hundred mistresses.
14. The sex icon's bra, which Marilyn wore in Some Like It Hot, fetched $14,000 at auction.
15. Famous writer Charles Dickens slept exclusively facing north. He firmly believed that this would help improve his writing talent.
16. What would US President Thomas Jefferson think of his descendants if he learned that the house in which he wrote the Declaration of Independence is now... a diner?
17. George Washington can be proud that his birthday is the only birthday that is an official holiday in all states of America.
18. During World War I, the future Pope John XXIII served as a sergeant in the Italian army.
19. Isaac Newton was interested in occult and supernatural ideas.
20. John Rockefeller gave away more than $500 million to charitable causes during his lifetime.
21. Personally, I am filled with bewilderment at the fact that the two-time winner Nobel Prize was unable to become a member of the prestigious French Academy solely because she was a woman.
22. Mozart never went to school.
23. There was a payphone in the mansion of one of the richest people in the world.
24. First Chairman communist party China worked as an assistant librarian at Beijing University before taking power.
25. Three most famous names in China they amaze with their modesty and originality: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley.
26. John Glenn became the first American astronaut to reach Earth's orbit.
27. This professional illusionist claimed that his extraordinary abilities came to him from the distant planet Huva.
And finally
28. Italians owe their national flag to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin - famous writer Russia late XIX- beginning of the 20th century. He became the author of more than twenty works and was awarded Pushkin Prize. In this article we will look at the biography of Kuprin and highlight interesting facts from his life.
First successes and failures
Alexander Kuprin was born in the Penza region on September 7, 1870. A year later, his father dies of cholera. Mom, Lyubov Kulanchakova, is forced to go with her son to a Moscow orphanage and live in the widows' ward. At the age of six, the boy goes to study at a boarding school at a military school.
IN educational institution writing talent emerges. In 1894, the Satirical Sheet published the story “The Last Debut.” Interesting facts about Kuprin indicate that for publishing without the permission of military leaders, the author was awarded a guardhouse. Among other fruits early creativity, it is worth noting the poems in which melancholy inspired by cadet life predominates.
In 1890 he completes his military training with the rank of second lieutenant. For the next 4 years, he served in the Ukrainian regiment. After the resignation of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, as his biography testifies, he had a brief acquaintance with many professions. IN different periods In life he was a circus actor, boxer, teacher, fisherman, salesman, aeronaut.
The main occupation was journalism. In 1899, the writer began to meet his colleagues: Chekhov, Bunin, Teleshov, Andreev. At the beginning of the 20th century, changes occurred in the biography of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. He works as an editor for several magazines and has a wife and daughter. The first volume of his stories has been published. In 1905 The story “The Duel” was published, which opened the door for the writer to the “Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.”
At this time, the writer lived in Sevastopol, where an uprising took place on the cruiser Ochakov. Kuprin takes the side of the sailors and publishes an article about the tragedy. He is forced to move to St. Petersburg.
An interesting fact from Kuprin’s life: he would be reminded of this note again in 1909 and asked to leave Odessa.
Kuprin's life in Emigration
In 1911, Kuprin began traveling through France and Italy. From abroad, he wrote to Repin about boredom, stuffiness and heat. But it is better to characterize the writer’s attitude towards the West with his words from the letter: “I am now abroad, which is disgusting.”
1914 comes, the First World War begins World War. Kuprin, what follows from his short biography, does two of the most important things. He equips his house as a military hospital and goes to serve in Finland. However, a year later the writer was demobilized for health reasons.
Soon the communists come to power. On the one hand, Kuprin saw the prospects for Russia’s development in the overthrow of imperialism. On the other hand, he was frightened by the methods of the Bolsheviks. A.I. Kuprin tried to collaborate with several magazines and voiced to Lenin the idea of creating a new publication.
In 1919, the writer took the side of the White Guards. But a year later, he cannot stand the war between the whites and the reds and moves to Paris. There is an assumption that it was Kuprin who came up with the disparaging word “sovdepiya”, derived from the Council of Deputies.
Homecoming
A.I. Kuprin, as is known from his biography, was very homesick. This is evidenced by numerous letters to friends. France is a wonderful country, but it is foreign. Alexander Ivanovich repeatedly complained about the French’s ignorance of the Russian language and dreamed of returning to Russia.
With time spent in a foreign land, my writing potential faded. The most significant work of the emigrant is “Junker”. It still preserves memories with the acuteness necessary for literature. Biography of A.I. Kuprina confirms: the colors of the past remained in Russia, but now they were losing color.
In 1936 the artist Bilibin informs Alexander Ivanovich of his intention to return to the USSR. The writer clings to the opportunity to leave for his homeland. Contrary to his expectations, Stalin agrees to return.
There is another interesting fact in Kuprin’s biography. Before his death, an article was published with notes of admiration for the Union. However, there is evidence that Alexander Ivanovich was very weak and could not write anything on his own. So, Soviet authority decided to mold the writer into the image of a repentant emigrant. Kuprin died on August 25, 1938 from esophageal cancer.
About other
Interesting facts about Kuprin have been preserved from his personal life. At the end of the story “The Duel,” we owe a lot to the writer’s first wife, Maria Karlovna Davydova. She literally forced her husband to work. At first there were family scenes, but they did not help until the wife kicked her loved one out of the house. He could return only after presenting the next chapter of the work to his wife.
But the writer divorced Davydova. Before this, he drowned his bitterness and pain in wine. Notes about the writer's antics regularly appeared in the tabloid press. He provoked fights and broke dishes in restaurants. The nanny of his 4-year-old daughter, who later became his wife, was able to bring him out of this state.
We tried to extract from Kuprin’s biography brief information about the most important thing. It is worth adding that he was married twice and had three daughters. But the main legacy left by the writer is his numerous works. What do you like from the work of Alexander Ivanovich? Write in the comments.
The lifestyle of writers can sometimes be no less provocative and interesting than the book itself. The habits and phobias of some writers can cause quite mixed reactions among fans of their work. Somerset Maugham, for example, was a practicing bisexual, Mark Twain adored cats and hated children, and James Joyce was afraid of dogs, lightning and water. This side of a writer’s life is in many ways much more interesting than dry summaries from a literature textbook.
Honore de Balzac
At fifty a man is more dangerous than at any other age, for he has costly experience and often fortune.
Balzac and the thief
One night a thief broke into Balzac's apartment and began rummaging through his desk drawers. Suddenly the thief heard loud laughter:
“My friend, you are looking in vain in the dark for something that I cannot find during the day.”
Balzac and the master
One day, a master who was renovating and improving his apartment came to Balzac and began to demand money for the work done. Balzac replied that now he did not have a centime, and asked the master to come another time. He became indignant and began to shout: “Every time I come to you for money, you are either not at home or you have no money.” To this Balzac said: “Well, that’s quite understandable! If I had money, I probably wouldn’t be at home now.”
Balzac and sex
Honore de Balzac loved coffee - he drank about 50 cups of strong Turkish coffee a day. If it was not possible to make coffee, the writer simply ground a handful of beans and chewed them with great pleasure.
Balzac believed that ejaculation is a waste of creative energy, since semen is a brain substance. Once, talking with a friend after a successful conversation, the writer exclaimed bitterly: “This morning I lost my novel!”
There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys are just better than others.
“A writer is a born liar, and if a man cannot “compose,” he will never become a writer,” said Faulkner. And to confirm this, he himself composed numerous “episodes” of his biography. Among these myths: while a cadet at a flight school, he landed a plane on the roof of a hangar (and even upside down and, moreover, managed to immediately drink whiskey, although he was hanging upside down), was shot down over France, was professionally and skillfully engaged in the production and sale of moonshine, received a serious wounded in the head and the doctors were forced to put a silver plate on him, etc.
Faulkner's longest sentence is forty-nine pages long.
William Faulkner worked as a postman for several years until it was discovered that he often threw undelivered letters into the trash.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Goblins are not villains, they just have high level corruption.
The author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien, was an extremely bad driver, snored so much that he had to spend the night in the bathroom so as not to disturb his wife’s sleep, and was also a terrible Francophobe - he hated the French since William the Conqueror.
Even as a child, John and his friends came up with several languages to communicate with each other. This passion for learning existing languages and constructing new ones remained with him throughout his life. Tolkien is the creator of several artificial languages: Quenya, or the language of the High Elves; Sindarin is the language of the gray elves.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
There is only one thing that upsets me in this world - that I need to become an adult.
During his entire piloting career, Saint-Exupéry suffered 15 accidents.
Saint-Exupery mastered the art of card trick perfectly.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Don't try so hard, the best things happen unexpectedly.
In one of his interviews, in particular to Playboy magazine, Marquez told a very delicate fact of his autobiography, it turns out that he lost his virginity at the age of 13, and since then he has had close friendships with the priestesses of love.
At the time when Marquez was just starting his career as a writer, he often did not have enough money for his own place, so he often had to live in brothels.
The well-known and extremely popular “Farewell Letter to Humanity” on the Internet, the authorship of which is attributed to Marquez, was not actually written by him. Commenting on the excitement around this “ farewell letter", the writer expressed surprise and regret that an extremely large number of people were misled. There is a version that the manuscript of the “letter” was brought to the editorial office of one of the largest newspapers in Peru by the Ambassador of Argentina, who had fun writing texts in his spare time; apparently, at some point he wanted recognition of his talent and played on the name of Marquez.
Somerset Maugham
My most big mistake was that I imagined myself to be three-quarters normal and only one-quarter homosexual, when in reality it was the other way around.
Maugham was a practicing bisexual.
Maugham traveled constantly: he visited China, India, Italy, North America, Mexico, Polynesia. During the First World War he was a British agent in Switzerland and Russia. In 1928, he bought a villa on the French Riviera, which became his permanent home almost until the end of his life.
Maugham always looked a true gentleman and had impeccable manners. He was also a great storyteller, despite his stutter. He maintained friendships with Winston Churchill, H.G. Wells and Noël Coward, who often visited his villa. IN last years his Maugham's life I was not at all afraid of death. He once said to one of his friends: “Death, like constipation, for example, is just one of the banalities that are very often encountered in a person’s life. So is it worth it to be so afraid of her?
Poets and writers for some - crazy geniuses, for others - they do not represent anything special, but only become annoying in schools with their poems, stories and biographies. But some people don’t even realize how interesting many personalities are beyond their creativity. What about the most unusual and unknown interesting facts about writers and poets?
A.S. Pushkin is “our everything,” I hope everyone remembers this. The line “let’s drink from grief” immediately comes to mind; where is the mug? - these words are partly true, although the most favorite drink was sweet lemonade!
In the process of creating the work, the writer refreshed himself not with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, but with a glass of lemonade, the poet especially loved it at night.
Surprisingly, before the duel with Dantes, Pushkin went into a pastry shop and drank a glass of aromatic lemonade with great pleasure.
Gogol's eccentricities
Oh, how many myths there are around the author of the famous “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. Contemporaries confirmed some of the writer’s oddities. Gogol slept sitting, loved to do needlework (sewed scarves and vests), wrote all his brilliant works only while standing!
For example, as a child I loved to roll bread balls, for which I usually got slapped on the wrist. And Gogol calmed his nerves by rolling balls all his life! Nikolai Berg, remembering the writer, said that Gogol constantly walked from corner to corner or wrote, while at the same time rolling balls of bread (precisely wheat). And the writer also threw rolled balls into kvass for his friends!
The Amazing Habits of Chekhov
But Chekhov, calming his nerves, did not roll balls, but used a hammer to smash crushed stone into dust, which was then used to sprinkle garden paths. The writer could spend hours breaking rubble without distraction!
Deep psychologist Dostoevsky
By the way, the characters of all the characters in Dostoevsky’s works were copied from real people. Dostoevsky constantly made new acquaintances, starting conversations even with random passers-by.
Contemporaries note that when the writer was immersed in writing works, he became so carried away that he forgot to eat. He walked around the room all day, saying sentences out loud. One day while writing famous novel Dostoevsky wandered from corner to corner and talked to himself about Raskolnikov’s attitude towards the old pawnbroker and his motive. The footman got scared when he accidentally overheard the conversation and decided that Dostoevsky was going to kill someone.
Religious philosopher Leo Tolstoy
Here you can make a huge list of the eccentricities and oddities of the author of Anna Karenina, War and Peace and much, much more.
Firstly, as an 82-year-old man, he ran away from his wonderful wife, who could spend hours copying his works into clear copy. And all because of a discrepancy in views, which emerged only after 48 years of marriage.
Secondly, Leo Tolstoy was a vegetarian. Thirdly, the writer lost the family estate at cards. Fourth, Leo Tolstoy denied everything material goods, constantly communicated with peasants and valued physical labor. The writer said about himself that if he doesn’t work at least a little in the yard a day, he will be very irritable. He also loved to do handicrafts, especially sewing boots for relatives, friends and even strangers.
Vladimir Nabokov and his butterflies
Entomology was a huge passion for Nabokov; he could spend hours running around the area looking for beautiful butterflies.
One of the funniest photographs of Nabokov with a net. But anyway For Nabokov, the craft of writing remained. The author's principle of writing texts is interesting. The works were written on 3-by-5-inch cards, which were then used to create a book. The cards had to have pointed ends straight lines and an elastic band.
Mystical letters of Evgeny Petrov (Kataev)
The main hobby of the co-author satirical works“Twelve Chairs”, “Golden Calf”, etc. there was collecting stamps, but even here it’s not so simple. Petrov sent letters to invented addresses to cities that did not exist on the world map. First he chose real country, and then fantasized about what city was missing there, who would live there, etc. You may ask: why did he do this?
After long travels around the world, the letter was returned, crowned with numerous stamps marked “Addressee not found.” But one day Petrov received a response from New Zealand; everything matched: the address, the name, and even the situation described by the domestic writer. Petrov wrote in a letter that he condoled the death of a certain Uncle Pete, and asked how his wife and daughter were doing. The addressee replied that he missed Petrov, remembered the days spent with him in New Zealand, his wife and daughter also said hello and hoped to see him soon. One would think that someone was making a joke, but the interlocutor attached a photo that showed big man, hugging Petrov!
The poor satirist got so excited that he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. He had absolutely no idea who the person in the photo was and had never been to New Zealand! This story was adapted into the plot of the 2012 film “The Envelope.”
