All the most interesting things about literature, books, newspapers, magazines and writers - the most interesting facts. To the "Interesting" collection: Interesting facts from the history of literature Reading preserves a person’s physical health

Who used "Albanian language" at the beginning of the 20th century?

In 1916, the futurist Zdanevich wrote a play without observing the normative rules of spelling and using “albanskava izyka”. The Padonki language, which appeared in the 2000s, whose spelling is based on similar principles, is sometimes called the “Albanian language,” but the coincidence with Zdanevich’s experience is accidental.

Which book was published under different titles in different countries based on exchange rates?

In 2000, Frederic Beigbeder’s novel “99 Francs” was published, recommended for sale in France at exactly that price. The same principle was the reason why publications in other countries were published under a different name, corresponding to the exchange rate: “39.90 marks” in Germany, “9.99 pounds” in the UK, “999 yen” in Japan, etc. In 2002, the book was republished in connection with the introduction of the euro and was called “14.99 euros.” After some time, the peak of the book’s popularity passed, and it was discounted to the title and the corresponding price of “6 euros.”

What circumstances led to the mathematician Alexander Volkov becoming a writer?

The fairy tale “The Wise Man of Oz” by the American writer Frank Baum was not published in Russian until 1991. At the end of the 30s, Alexander Volkov, who was a mathematician by training and taught this science at one of the Moscow institutes, began to study English and, for practice, decided to translate this book in order to retell it to his children. They really liked it, they began to demand a continuation, and Volkov, in addition to the translation, began to come up with something of his own. This was the beginning of his literary journey, the result of which was “The Wizard of the Emerald City” and many other tales about the Magic Land.

from here: shkolnymir.info

In which work was the Kasparo-Karpov system mentioned long before Kasparov and Karpov became known to the world?

The Strugatsky brothers' story "Noon, XXII Century" mentions the Kasparo-Karpov system - a method that was used to make a "copy" of the brain and build its mathematical model. The story was published in 1962 - Anatoly Karpov was only 11 years old at the time, and Garry Kasparov had not yet been born.

Where does the word "miniature" come from?

The word “miniature” comes from the Latin name for red paint “minium” and in the original designates ancient or medieval paintings in the genre of illuminated manuscript. Due to the small size of these paintings and the presence of the prefix “mini” in the word, an etymological metamorphosis later occurred, as a result of which any small drawings, especially portrait miniatures, began to be called miniatures. From painting, the term penetrated into literature, where it refers to works of small format.

Who came up with the plot of the novel The Count of Monte Cristo?

Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who invented the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made significant contributions to The Three Musketeers.

Auguste Macquet - from: vedicpalmistry.org

What is the name of the main character of Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades”?

The main character of Pushkin's story "The Queen of Spades" is not called Herman. His name is generally unknown, but Hermann (with two n) is the surname of the hero, German by origin, which is quite common in Germany. But in the opera “The Queen of Spades” Tchaikovsky removed one “n”, turning the surname Hermann into the name Hermann.

How did they translate a French novel into Russian, in which there is not a single letter e?

In 1969, the novel “La disparition” by the French writer Georges Perec was published. One of the key features of the novel was that it did not contain a single letter e, the most common letter in the French language. Using the same principle - without the letter e - the book was translated into English, German and Italian. In 2005, the novel was published in Russian, translated by Valery Kislov, under the title “Disappearance.” In this variant you cannot find the letter o, since it is the most common in the Russian language.

Georges Perec, from: modernista.se

Which literary character began to use many forensic methods before the police?

Arthur Conan Doyle, in his stories about Sherlock Holmes, described many forensic methods that were still unknown to the police. These include collecting cigarette butts and cigarette ashes, identifying typewriters, and examining traces at the crime scene with a magnifying glass. Subsequently, the police began to widely use these and other Holmes methods.

How were Dostoevsky’s real walks around St. Petersburg reflected in the novel “Crime and Punishment”?

Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, he drew up the description of the courtyard in which Raskolnikov hides the things he stole from the pawnbroker’s apartment from personal experience - when one day, while walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard to relieve himself.

Where and when did Baron Munchausen live?

Baron Munchausen was a very real historical figure. In his youth, he left the German town of Bodenwerder for Russia to serve as a page. He then began a career in the army and rose to the rank of captain, after which he went back to Germany. There he became famous for telling extraordinary stories about his service in Russia: for example, entering St. Petersburg on a wolf harnessed to a sleigh, a horse cut in half in Ochakovo, fur coats going crazy, or a cherry tree growing on the head of a deer. These stories, as well as completely new ones attributed to the baron by other authors, led to the emergence of Munchausen as a literary character.

from here: http://community.livejournal.com/towns_stories/3173.html

Where and when was a concept book made entirely of blank pages sold?

When asked what 5 books you would take with you to a desert island, Bernard Shaw replied that he would take 5 books with blank pages. This concept was embodied in 1974 by the American publishing house Harmony Books, releasing a book called “The Book of Nothing,” which consisted exclusively of 192 blank pages. She found her buyer, and subsequently the publishing house republished this book more than once.

Bernard Shaw, from here: http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/spacesite/rubric/1140180/

Which literary character was invented by Dumas just to increase his salary?

When Alexandre Dumas wrote “The Three Musketeers” in serial format in one of the newspapers, the contract with the publisher stipulated line-by-line payment for the manuscript. To increase the fee, Dumas invented a servant of Athos named Grimaud, who spoke and answered all questions exclusively in monosyllables, in most cases “yes” or “no.” The continuation of the book, entitled “Twenty Years Later,” was paid by the word, and Grimaud became a little more talkative.

Alexandre Dumas, from here: hy.wikipedia.org

Which Kipling characters changed gender in the Russian translation?

In the original Jungle Book, Bagheera is a male character. Russian translators changed Bagheera's gender, most likely because the word “panther” is feminine. The same transformation occurred with another Kipling character: the cat became, in the Russian translation, “The cat that walks by itself.”

R. Kipling, from here: flbiblioteka.ru

Which writer got the stone that lay on Gogol's first grave?

Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”

Gogol, artonline.ru

Elena and Mikhail Bulgakov, from here: chesspro.ru

Which famous English-language literary dystopia contains many words of Russian origin?

In the dystopian film A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess put into the mouths of the teenage characters a jargon he invented called Nadsat. Most of the nadsat words were of Russian origin - for example, droog (friend), litso (face), viddy (see). The word Nadsat itself is formed from the ending of the Russian numerals from 11 to 19, its meaning is the same as that of the word teenager (“teenager”). Translators of the novel into Russian faced the difficulty of how to adequately convey this slang. In one version of the translation, such words were replaced by English words written in Cyrillic (men, face, etc.). In another version, the jargon words were left in their original form in Latin letters.

Anthony Burgess, from: russianwashingtonbaltimore.com

Which writer, at the end of his life, acknowledged the harm caused to nature by his own work?

Peter Benchley, the author of the novel Jaws, later filmed by Steven Spielberg, in the last years of his life became an ardent defender of sharks and the marine ecosystem as a whole. He wrote several works in which he criticized the negative attitude towards sharks, inflated in the public consciousness, including thanks to “Jaws”.

Peter Benchley, from: thedailygreen.com

Which words from Pushkin's poem "Monument" were cut out by censors in 1949?

In 1949, Pushkin's 150th anniversary was celebrated. A report on his life and work was given on the radio by Konstantin Simonov. In one Kazakh town, a large number of Kalmyks, deported here from their historical homeland, gathered at the loudspeaker. Somewhere in the middle of the report, they lost all interest in him and left the square. The thing was that while reading Pushkin’s “Monument,” Simonov stopped reading right at the moment when he was supposed to say: “And a friend of the steppes, the Kalmyk.” This meant that the Kalmyks were still in disgrace and censorship excluded any mention of them even in such harmless cases.

Konstantin Simonov, from here: rian.ru

James Barrie created the character of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother.

James Barry, from: pl.wikipedia.org

Who is awarded the Ig Nobel Prize and for what?

At the beginning of October of each year, when the Nobel Prize laureates are named, a parody Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in parallel for achievements that cannot be reproduced or there is no point in doing so. In 2009, among the laureates were veterinarians who proved that a cow with any name gives more milk than a nameless one. The Literature Prize went to the Irish police for issuing fifty traffic fines to a certain Prawo Jazdy, which means “driving license” in Polish. And in 2002, the Gazprom company received a prize in the field of economics for its application of the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers in business.

Who did the old woman from the fairy tale about the Goldfish by the Brothers Grimm want to become?

The basis for Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” was the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife.” Pushkin’s old woman finds herself broke after she wanted to become the mistress of the sea, and her German “colleague” at this stage became the Pope. And only after the desire to become the Lord God I was left with nothing.

Brothers Grimm, from: nord-inform.de

How did cabin boy Richard Parker repeat the sad fate of his literary namesake?

In Edgar Poe's 1838 story The Narrative of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym, there is an episode where the ship is caught in a storm and four sailors are saved on a raft. Having no food, they decide to eat one of them by lot - and that victim is Richard Parker. In 1884, a real yacht sank, and four people on one boat also survived. They hardly read that story, but in the end they ate the cabin boy, whose name was Richard Parker.

Edgar Poe, from here: amcorners.ru

Why is Isaev not the real name of Stirlitz?

Stirlitz’s real name is not Maxim Maksimovich Isaev, but Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov. Isaev is the first operational pseudonym of the intelligence officer, introduced by Yulian Semyonov in the first novel “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” and Stirlitz is already the second pseudonym. This is not reflected in the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”.

Yulian Semenov, from here: merjevich.ru

What insect actually is the dragonfly from Krylov's fable?

In Krylov’s fable “The Dragonfly and the Ant” there are the lines: “The jumping dragonfly sang the red summer.” However, it is known that the dragonfly does not make sounds. The fact is that at that time the word “dragonfly” served as a general name for several types of insects. And the hero of the fable is actually a grasshopper.

Ivan Andreevich Krylov, from here: rudata.ru

What cruel scenes were removed from folk tales by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm?

Most of the fairy tales known to us by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and other storytellers arose among the people in the Middle Ages, and their original plots are sometimes distinguished by cruelty and naturalness of everyday scenes. For example, in the tale of Sleeping Beauty, the foreign king does not kiss her, but rapes her. The wolf eats not only the grandmother, but half the village into the bargain, and Little Red Riding Hood then lures him into a pit of boiling tar. In the fairy tale about Cinderella, the sisters still manage to try on the shoe, for which one of them cuts off her toe, the other her heel, but then they are exposed by the singing of pigeons.

Charles Perrault, from here: nnm.ru

What topic in Soviet science fiction was so hackneyed that stories on it were not accepted by magazines for publication?

The theme of the Tunguska meteorite was very popular among Soviet science fiction writers, especially beginners. In the 1980s, the literary magazine “Ural Pathfinder” even had to write a separate paragraph in its requirements for publications: “Works that reveal the secret of the Tunguska meteorite will not be considered.”

Why do we have a tradition of signing the spines of books from bottom to top, while Europeans do the opposite?

In Western Europe and America, book spines are signed from top to bottom. This tradition goes back to the times when there were few books: if the book is lying on the table (or in a small stack), the reader should be able to easily read the title. And in Eastern Europe and Russia, the tradition of signing spines from bottom to top has taken root, because it is more convenient to read when books are on a shelf.

Where did the expression “no brainer” come from?

The source of the expression “It’s a no brainer” is a poem by Mayakovsky (“It’s even a no brainer - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It became widespread first in the Strugatskys’ story “The Country of Crimson Clouds”, and then in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (classes A, B, C, D, D) or one year (classes E, F, I). The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs.” When they arrived at the boarding school, the two-year students were already ahead of them in the non-standard program, so at the beginning of the school year the expression “no brainer” was very relevant.

Which book was imprisoned in the Bastille?

The prisoners of the Bastille were not only people. Once upon a time, the famous French Encyclopedia compiled by Diderot and D'Alembert was imprisoned. The book was accused of harming religion and public morality.

Denis Diderot, from here:

What did Lenin's phrase about the cook and the state actually sound like?

“Any cook is capable of ruling the state,” Lenin never said. This phrase was attributed to him, taken from Mayakovsky’s poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”. In fact, he wrote this: “We are not utopians. We know that any laborer and any cook are not capable of immediately entering into government... We demand that training in public administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that it begin immediately.”

Which science fiction writer wrote reviews of non-existent books?

Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of short stories called Absolute Emptiness. All the stories are united by the fact that they are reviews of non-existent books written by fictitious authors.

from here: nnm.ru

How did Leo Tolstoy feel about his novels?

Leo Tolstoy was skeptical about his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, he sent Fet a letter: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” An entry in his diary in 1908 reads: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.”

What is the meaning of the word peace in War and Peace?

In the title of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace,” the word world is used as an antonym to war (pre-revolutionary “mir”), and not in the meaning of “the world around us” (pre-revolutionary “mir”). All lifetime editions of the novel were published under the title “War and Peace,” and Tolstoy himself wrote the title of the novel in French as “La guerre et la paix.” However, due to typos in different editions at different times, where the word was written as “mir”, debate about the true meaning of the novel’s title still continues.

Which writer encouraged readers to use their own punctuation?

The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking.

Why didn’t poets like Mayakovsky for writing poetry with a ladder?

When Mayakovsky introduced his famous poetic “ladder” into use, fellow poets accused him of cheating - after all, poets were then paid by the number of lines, and Mayakovsky received 2-3 times more for poems of similar length.

What pessimist died of laughter?

The Cuban poet Julian del Casal, whose poems were distinguished by deep pessimism, died of laughter. He was having dinner with friends, one of whom told a joke. The poet began to have an attack of uncontrollable laughter, which caused aortic dissection, bleeding and sudden death.

What was the name of the city where Anna Karenina threw herself under a train?

In the novel by Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina threw herself under a train at the Obiralovka station near Moscow. During Soviet times, this village became a city and was renamed Zheleznodorozhny.

Where a radio drama was mistaken for a real Martian invasion?

On October 30, 1938, a radio dramatization of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds was broadcast in New Jersey as a parody of a radio report from the scene. Of the six million people who listened to the broadcast, one million believed in the reality of what was happening. Mass panic arose, tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes (especially after President Roosevelt’s alleged call to remain calm), the roads were clogged with refugees. Telephone lines were paralyzed: thousands of people reported allegedly seeing Martian ships. It subsequently took authorities six weeks to convince the population that the attack had not occurred.

What is the real name of Korney Chukovsky?

Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.

from here: nnm.ru

Who preserved Kafka's works for the whole world?

Franz Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime. 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.

Franz Kafka, from: germanstudiesblog.wordpress.com

How long did Robinson Crusoe spend in Russia?

The novel about the adventures of Robinson Crusoe has a sequel, in which the hero is shipwrecked off the coast of Southeast Asia and is forced to get to Europe through all of Russia. In particular, he waits out the winter in Tobolsk for 8 months.

When did the prologue “Near the Lukomorye green oak...” appear?

Pushkin wrote the prologue “There is a green oak at the Lukomorye...” of the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” for its second edition, released 8 years after the first publication.

What book did the writer ask to sell for exactly the same price as a bottle of vodka?

When the poem “Moscow - Petushki” was published as a separate book, at the request of the author Venedikt Erofeev, the price was set at 3 rubles 62 kopecks. This is how much a bottle of vodka cost at the time the poem was written.

How did Andrei Bitov learn about a new word in his work?

According to Andrei Bitov, he first learned about Zen Buddhism at the age of thirty, having read the dissertation of an English literary critic entitled “Zen Buddhism in the early works of Andrei Bitov.”

The first official publication of Venedikt Erofeev’s poem “Moscow - Cockerels” in the USSR took place in the magazine “Sobriety and Culture”.

Who came up with the name Svetlana?

The name Svetlana is not originally Slavic. It was invented and first used by the poet Vostokov in the romance “Svetlana and Mstislav”, and gained wide popularity after the publication of Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana” in 1813.

Who predicted the sinking of the Titanic in a literary work?

14 years before the sinking of the Titanic, Morgan Robertson published a story that became her prediction. In the story, the ship Titan, much like the Titanic in size, also collided with an iceberg on an April night, killing most of the passengers.

Why was Winnie the Pooh named so?

Winnie the Pooh got the first part of his name from one of the real toys of Christopher Robin, the son of the writer Milne. The toy was named after a female bear at the London Zoo named Winnipeg, who came there from Canada. The second part - Pooh - was borrowed from the name of the swan of acquaintances of the Milne family.

Where did the expression “things smell like kerosene” come from?

Koltsov’s 1924 feuilleton talked about a major scam uncovered during the transfer of an oil concession in California. The most senior US officials were involved in the scam. It was here that the expression “things smell like kerosene” was used for the first time.

Where did the expression “let's go back to our sheep” come from?

In the medieval French comedy, a rich clothier sues a shepherd who stole his sheep. During the meeting, the clothier forgets about the shepherd and showers reproaches on his lawyer, who did not pay him for six cubits of cloth. The judge interrupts the speech with the words: “Let's return to our sheep,” which have become winged.

Which writer wrote a story about a religious feat based on a story about a campaign for vodka?

In Leskov's story, an Old Believer walks from one bank of the river to the other along the chains of an unfinished bridge during a stormy ice drift in order to return an icon confiscated from the Old Believers from the monastery. According to the author, the plot is based on real events, only a bricklayer appears in it, and he went not for an icon, but for cheaper vodka.

Who valued books more than people?

In 267, the Goths sacked Athens and killed many of the inhabitants, but did not burn the books.

How did Bernard Shaw react to receiving the Nobel Prize?

In 1925, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."

What pornographic scene is in "Woe from Wit"?

In the 19th century, actresses refused to play Sophia in “Woe from Wit” with the words: “I am a decent woman and I don’t play in pornographic scenes!” They considered such a scene to be a night conversation with Molchalin, who was not yet the heroine’s husband.

Reading is a favorite pastime of intellectuals. Covered with a blanket by the fireplace, you can spend hours following the adventures of the heroes of your favorite novel, turning through the pages of a slightly tattered book.

We have collected for you a few facts about this activity that will allow you not to reproach yourself for wasting time, and perhaps they will remind you of the hundreds of books you have not read and will force you to take a new volume from the shelf.

1. Reading preserves a person’s physical health

In order to put letters into words, to understand the main idea of a work, to find your own explanation for everything, you need to do serious work, which is called gymnastics for the brain and is an excellent prevention of some of its diseases.

By the way, it doesn’t matter what you read. For mental exercises, not only a voluminous tome with tasks is suitable. A light bestseller that evokes a lot of positive emotions and excites the imagination will also cope well with this task.

2. Good books heal the soul

Time spent with a good book helps develop wonderful spiritual qualities: kindness, compassion, fortitude. Science fiction and fantasy books develop the ability to dream, to better understand people of different races and the world as a whole.

3. It’s better to teach children to read before school.

Young children learn new knowledge very quickly. Reading is no exception. Experts have come to the conclusion that it is better to start training between the ages of 4 and 6 years. In this case, less effort will be required than after 7 years. There are experts (for example, the authors of the book “Read Before You Talk,” Natalya Sozonova and Ekaterina Kutsina) who are confident that teaching preschoolers to read helps them cope with serious speech therapy problems and start speaking.

4. Reading helps you be more successful

Books not only develop imagination, entertain and expand vocabulary. They teach you to concentrate. A trained reader can easily delve into his favorite activity in transport, and for many it is not difficult to watch several programs at once, switching channels, and keep several important things in mind.

5. Reading speed of great people

The average person reads books at a speed of 200-250 words per minute. This is approximately 2 pages of the book. The reading speed of the greats is interesting: the great French commander Napoleon read 2000 words per minute, Balzac literally devoured a 200-page novel in half an hour. Thomas Edison easily memorized text in pages.

6. Speed reading is a convenient technique

Speed reading is a very useful technique that anyone can learn. It allows you to significantly reduce the time spent studying printed materials and increase the reading pace from 200 characters per minute to 3000 without compromising your understanding of what is written. The simplest technique is to isolate the main thing from the text, skipping the “water”, and not repeating to yourself what you read. Many great people have used speed reading. Among them: Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, classic of proletarian literature Maxim Gorky.

7. Books used to be chained

Medieval libraries have reached us, in the collections of which shelves with books on chains have been preserved. This protected the funds from theft, because many copies were very expensive. To prevent the chains from getting tangled, the publications were placed on the shelf with the spine facing away from them, which is not very common for us. This practice existed before the advent of mass printing, until the 1880s.

8. A college graduate's book load

The average American graduates from college and reads only 5 books in his entire life!

Books and bookmaking are beautiful not only because they open up new worlds to us, but also because of their ability to endlessly surprise. Some facts about the books are simply incredible. We tried to collect the most interesting and unusual ones.

1. The smallest library in the world is located in the English town of Westbury sub-Mandip. Only 800 inhabitants live here. They set up a tiny library in a phone booth. Due to the growth of mobile communications, traditional phones are no longer relevant. And they found a great use! This is how a small street library appeared in Westbury-sub-Mandip, which works around the clock: even at night there is lighting in the booth and you can read a book. Residents themselves replenish the library's stock and ensure that books are always returned.

Things from days gone by

2. The oldest printed one! book – Dharani scroll, also called sutra. Researchers consider it the oldest of all printed materials. The text of the sutra was printed using letters carved on wooden blanks. The sutra was found in South Korea in 1966 during excavations of the foundation of the Bulguksa Pagoda. Archaeologists believe that it was printed around 704 AD. Let us remember that the first book printed on a machine was the Bible of Johannes Gutenberg in 1454.

3. The largest royalty was paid by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius to the poet Oppian. For each line of two poems about... fishing and hunting, the author received a gold coin. In total, Oppian wrote twenty thousand lines.

4. Previously, books were inaccessible to most, so they were chained in libraries. The chains were long enough to remove a book from the shelf and read, but did not allow the book to be removed from the library. This practice was common until the 18th century.

5. In addition, books used to be placed with their spines inside the shelf; why is still unclear.

6. Books were sentenced to prison. Thus, the French Encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alembert "sat" in the Bastille. Because knowledge caused irreparable harm to obscurantism.

7. Famous writers were also imprisoned. Miguel Cervantes conceived his Don Quixote behind bars, Oscar Wilde wrote The Prison Confession, and Nicolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince.

Some interesting numbers

8. The largest book in the world is “Superbook”, published in 1976 in the American city of Denver, in the state of Colorado. It's three hundred pages long. The book weighs more than 250 kilograms. Its length and width are 3.07 and 2.74 meters.

9. The most famous among all the great books is the Giant Code (Codex Gigas), which was made at the beginning of the 13th century (around 1230) in the city of Podlazice (Czech Republic). At that time it was the largest book in the world. According to legend, the monk who worked on the book sold his soul to the devil. Initially, the book contained 640 pages, but only 624 pages have survived to this day, weight - 75 kilograms, height 915 cm, width 508 cm, thickness 22 cm. Codex Gigas is currently located in the Royal Swedish Library in Stockholm.

10. Steven Bloomberg, a bibliocleptomaniac, stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries. Bloomberg's collection was valued at $20 million.

11. One of the most expensive books in the world, Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester, a notebook of his notes, belongs to Bill Gates, who bought the codex for $24 million.

12. On average, people read 6.5 hours a week.

13. Women read more, they buy 68% of all books!

14. Buyers look at the front cover of a book for about 8 seconds, and at the back for 15.

15. In 2012, Google counted the amount of all artistic, journalistic and scientific materials in the world. At that time, the total number of books on Earth was 129,864,880.

Books disappear into daylight

16. The Argentine publishing house Eterna Cadencia presented a very original idea for a book with an unusual format, “El libro que no puede esperar” (The Book That Can’t Wait Long). This book is printed with ink that disappears 2 months after the reader first opens the book. The book is packaged in a special plastic wrapper. Once the reader has removed and opened the book, the ink begins to fade due to reaction with sunlight and air, and after 60 days nothing remains of the text, only blank pages. You won’t be able to put off reading such a book for too long.

17. A similar “trick” was embodied in his time by the “father” of the cyber-punk movement, William Gibson, in collaboration with artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. They released the conceptual work Agrippa (Book of the Dead) in 1992. The book included an art album, which included a floppy disk with a poem dedicated to human memory and the gradual disappearance of all moments and memories. The unusual thing was that the poem could only be read once, because the first time it was read, the program on the floppy disk encrypted the text. And the album’s drawings and inscriptions were printed with photosensitive paint, which began to melt when exposed to daylight.

18. After the release of Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, Ballantine Books released a limited edition. 200 copies of the novel were covered in an asbestos-based material with exceptional fire-resistant properties. Later, this “trick” was repeated by Stephen King, publishing a batch of the novel “Inflammable with a Look” in an asbestos cover.

And these are just a few of the secrets and facts that books and libraries hide. Do you know other interesting stories about books? Share with us!

Illustration: Elizaveta Clover

The creators of the heritage of Russian literature evoke a lot of conflicting feelings, both with their works and personal successes. Sometimes authors inspire, sometimes disappoint, often make you laugh, sometimes sadden you, or make you sympathize with their plight. Disputes around the biographies of writers, as well as around their works, have not subsided for decades. No matter how complicated the lives of writers or the motives of their creations may be, only one thing is certain: Russian literature is famous for a huge number of interesting facts that frame immortal works.

Griboyedov and his grief from his sharp mind

The comedy in verse by Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov “Woe from Wit” made the writer a classic of Russian literature. It is interesting to know that the interjection “Oh!” appears on the pages of the work 6 times, and the exclamation “Ah!” Griboedov used it 54 times.

The first to see the comedy was the fabulist Krylov. The writer was afraid of Ivan Andreevich and highly valued his point of view, so he considered it necessary to appear before Krylov with a literary masterpiece. The man grumpily accepted the work from Griboedov’s hands, and at the end of the reading, he said that the censors would not be able to appreciate this work, moreover, Alexander Sergeevich faces a “ticket” to Siberia for what he wrote.

The many faces of Pushkin

Illustration: Khozatskaya Ekaterina

Interest is aroused not only by life, but also by creative fruits. Few people know that the reader might never have seen the famous Mermaid in Chains, Koshchei and the Scientist's Cat. After all, the writer supplemented the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila” with the poem “At the Lukomorye Green Oak” only 8 years after the first publication.

Eugene Onegin is no less interesting for researchers. The work contains the expression “...I looked out the window and crushed flies.”

“He settled in that peace,
Where is the village old-timer?
For about forty years he was quarreling with the housekeeper,
I looked out the window and squashed flies.”

This phrase should not be taken literally. Here we were not talking about annoying insects at all.

Squashing a fly has at least two meanings:

drink wine, get drunk...
an image of the stagnant life of a noble pastime and dull entertainment.

Most likely, the ironic metaphor that Pushkin used here illustrated the typical characteristic of a person who likes to drink. In modern language there is a definition of “being under the influence,” in other words, “being not sober.” And this version is more appropriate. But we will never determine with absolute certainty what Pushkin meant...

In another Pushkin work, “The Queen of Spades,” an attentive reader must have noticed that the main character does not have a name, only his surname Hermann is known. An important nuance here is the double “n” at the end. When the story was presented in the opera of the same name, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky changed the surname to the main name of the character, calling him Herman, with one “n” at the end.

Surprisingly, it is “The Queen of Spades” that is considered one of the first works in Russian that was successful in Europe.

By the way, the plot of “The Queen of Spades” was suggested to Pushkin by the young Prince Golitsyn, who, having lost, regained what he had lost by betting, on the advice of his grandmother, on three cards that had once been suggested to her by Saint Germain. This grandmother is the “mustachioed princess” N.P. Golitsyn, known in Moscow society, nee Chernysheva, the mother of Moscow governor D.V. Golitsyn.

Immediately after its publication in 1834, the mystical story gained remarkable success among the reading public. From Pushkin's diary entry:

“My “Queen of Spades” is in great fashion. Players punt on three, seven, ace.”

Pushkin wrote more than 70 epigraphs to his works. For comparison: the number of epigraphs of Gogol and Turgenev is 20 each.

Anna Karenina in the painting by G. Manizer

It is noteworthy that Pushkin’s eldest daughter, M. A. Hartung, became one of the most important prototypes of Anna Karenina for Leo Tolstoy’s novel of the same name. The writer met Maria Alexandrovna in 1868 in the house of General A. A. Tulubiev and, impressed, described some features of her appearance: dark hair, white lace and a small purple garland of pansies.

The mystery of the prose writer Nikolai Gogol

Remembering the mystical, but at the same time very topical writer Nikolai Gogol, it is worth noting that this man was passionate about needlework. He enjoyed knitting, cutting, and sewing. The man skillfully made neckerchiefs, scarves, and dresses for his sisters. Surely such a contradictory nature of Nikolai Vasilyevich pulled along with it the creative endeavors of the master of the pen.

Fans of Russian literature will be interested to know that the play “The Inspector General” is based on real events. Alexander Pushkin told Gogol about what happened in the Novgorod province. It was this writer who insisted on completing The Inspector General, despite the fact that Gogol was going to stop the story. However, the play was destined to live. The result still pleases readers to this day.

Nikolai Vasilyevich’s whole life is a tangled mystery. Mysticism followed the author, and even after his death, heirs and researchers were left with more mysteries than answers. Nikolai Vasilyevich’s grave was covered with a stone, which was popularly called Golgotha for its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When the time came to “relocate” the cemetery, the stone was moved to the grave of another mystic - Mikhail Bulgakov. Surprising in this story is Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeated more than once to Gogol: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”

Dragonfly Krylova

In the fable “The Dragonfly and the Ant,” the fabulist Krylov describes the dragonfly as a singing creature, but everyone knows that this insect does not sing. It turned out that dragonfly was previously a common name for several types of insects, and Krylov actually wrote about the grasshopper.

Chukovsky is banned

The name of the master of Russian children's literature was actually different. The writer's real name is Nikolai Ivanovich Korneychukov. It is noteworthy that the real names in this connection are the first and last names. There is no middle name on the poet's birth certificate. He was illegitimate. Being already quite old, Chukovsky asked to be called simply Kolya.

It is known that the writer’s work was subject to very strict censorship. Chukovsky's diary very honestly depicted the full picture of the horror of that time. They are literally full of references to the desperate struggle against censorship, which from time to time banned almost everything that was written by the poet. Fairy tales were banned, entire pages from articles and books were thrown out. Today it is very difficult to believe the arguments of officials who are stunned by autocracy:

So, in “Moidodyr” for the words “God, God,” Chukovsky went to explain himself to the censor. In "Cockroach" they saw an anti-Stalinist subtext.

"Stash" by Raskolnikov

Made a huge contribution to the treasury of Russian literature

Literature is the most interesting topic that connects almost all people and nations. Each country has its favorite writers, fashion magazines, and news newspapers. But there are also books and writers who have become legends. They belong to the world, they are read all over the world, they are translated.

And interesting facts about literature

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Gone with the Wind is Margaret Mitchell's only book. After working as a journalist and remarrying, she became a housewife and really missed her old job, then she began to write this book. Work on the book took about 10 years.

Bulgakov wrote “The Master and Margarita” for a total of more than 10 years. Hidden dating is also contained in the indication of the age of the Master - the most autobiographical of all the characters in the novel. The master is “a man about thirty-eight years old.” Bulgakov himself turned the same age on May 15, 1929. 1929 is also the year when Bulgakov began working on “The Master and Margarita.”

The first newspaper, very similar to modern ones, is considered to be the French “La Gazette”, which was published since May 1631. The significance of “Le Gazette” was very great, King Louis XIII himself, Cardinal Richelieu wrote in it, and it was in it that paid advertising began to be placed.

Audiobooks are a voiced work of art, a lecture, an excursion, recorded on any media, read by a professional actor or their group for the purpose of further distribution and listening. There are different opinions about when exactly the first audiobook appeared. Many believe that the prototype for the first audiobook dates back to 1933, when anthropologist J.P. Harrington recorded stories and legends told by Native American tribes. Discussions about creating audio books for the blind began in the early 1930s in the USA. The first such attempts were made in 1931 by the US Congress. The first audiobooks were produced by the American Foundation for the Blind in 1932, and in 1934 Congress approved free distribution of audiobooks. Commercial audiobooks were pioneered by Dylan Thomas, who recorded his audiobook A Child's Christmas in Wales on cassette in 1952. This book did not receive too much distribution, but a start had already been made.

Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva. When the poetess emigrated to Berlin, they began to correspond. This correspondence was like a novel in letters. They saw each other in Moscow, many years later. Pasternak constantly helped Tsvetaeva financially. While packing her for evacuation, he joked about the packing rope, that you could hang yourself on it, it would hold up. Then it turned out that it was on this rope that Tsvetaeva committed suicide in Yelabuga.

Virginia Woolf wrote all her books standing up.

Founded in 1892, Vogue is probably one of the oldest fashion magazines in the world. This American super cult fashion magazine is published once a month in 23 different national and local regions. The American version of Vogue magazine was founded by Arthur Turnure as a weekly newspaper. From 1988 to the present, the editor-in-chief of American Vogue has been the legendary lady Anna Wintour.

Three of Franz Kafka's novels - "America", "The Trial" and "The Castle" - remained unfinished. But if the understatement, by and large, only benefits “The Trial” and “The Castle,” then the open ending of “America” seems like a cruel joke.

From 1912 to 1948, Olympic medals were awarded not only to athletes, but also to artists. Back at the end of the 19th century, Pierre de Coubertin, proposing to revive the Olympics, expressed the idea that competition should be both in sports disciplines and in various fields of art, and the works should be related to sports. There were five main medal categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. However, after the 1948 Olympics, it became clear that almost all participants in such competitions were professionals earning money through art, and it was decided to replace such competitions simply with cultural exhibitions.

Larousse Gastronomique (1938) is the world's premier gastronomic encyclopedia, the absolute first item on any list of food-related books. The editor-in-chief of Larousse Gastronomique was Prosper Montagne, the great French chef educator. At the time of the first edition of the book, the king of French cuisine, Auguste Escoffier, was still alive, who wrote the preface to the encyclopedia (and did not hesitate to point out that Montagne borrowed a lot from his own “Culinary Guide”). However, this was the first attempt to create a book of this kind, and it turned out to be unusually successful - the encyclopedia actually became a living monument to haute French cuisine.

The Library of Congress is the national library of the United States, the largest library in the world. It was founded on April 24, 1800, when US President John Adams signed a law moving the state capital from Philadelphia to Washington. Among other things, this law contained a provision for the allocation of $5,000 (then a very significant amount) “for the purchase of books that may be needed by Congress, and the creation of appropriate premises for their storage.” It houses over 5,500 incunabula (including the Gutenberg Bible), book collections of T. Jefferson and a number of other US presidents, collections of works of Chinese (330 thousand volumes) and Japanese (450 thousand volumes) literature, a collection of rare American publications (60 thousand . vol.), 14.5 million books and brochures, 132 thousand volumes of bound newspapers, 3.3 million units of sheet music, etc.

One of Marquez's last literary works, Remembering My Sad Whores, was published in 2004 by Random House Mondadori. Shortly before the presentation, book “pirates” managed to get hold of the manuscript and illegally put the book on sale. In response to this unfortunate event, Marquez changed the ending of the story, and the millionth edition was sold out in record time. The counterfeit products were soon confiscated by the police, and these items are now coveted by many collectors.

Albert Camus smoked throughout his life. It is difficult to find photographs of him without a cigarette. He even named his cat “Cigarette.”

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho has been published in more than 117 countries and translated into 67 languages. In 2002, the Portuguese Journal di Letras, an authority on local literature and the literary market, announced that The Alchemist had sold more copies than any other book written in Portuguese in the history of the language.

Franz Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime. 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.

George Byron created a completely new direction - “gloomy selfishness.”

Byron and Lermontov are distant relatives. His ancestor Gordon, who lived in the sixteenth century, was married to Margaret Learmonth. She had the roots of a famous Scottish family, which gave rise to the origin of Mikhail Yuryevich himself.

In the novel by Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina threw herself under a train at the Obiralovka station near Moscow. During Soviet times, this village became a city and was renamed Zheleznodorozhny.

Most readers consider the suppression of individuality through government censorship to be the main theme of the novel Fahrenheit 451, but Ray Bradbury himself states that this perception is incorrect. The author's main message is the danger of television, which destroys interest in reading literature, replacing it with entertainment, and deep knowledge with superficial “factoids.”

In 2002, a “new” Harry Potter book was published in China by an anonymous author called Harry Potter and Bao Zulong. It was an accurate translation of Tolkien's The Hobbit, in which all the characters were replaced with heroes from the works of JK Rowling. Rowling's lawyers were only able to get the Chinese publisher to issue an apology in the press and a fine of $3,400, and the book sold millions of copies.

The writer Ian Fleming, who created James Bond, was also an amateur ornithologist. Therefore, it is not strange that it was the ornithological guide by the American James Bond, Birds of the West Indies, that gave the name to the most famous spy in the world.

The most widely read is Komsomolskaya Pravda. Founded back in 1925, it has not lost popularity for many years. After Komsomolskaya Pravda in the ranking is the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty. It is read in more than sixty countries. In 1990, this tabloid was included in the Guinness Book of Records for the fact that its circulation exceeded thirty-three million copies, and the number of readers exceeded one hundred million. In America, several newspapers can be called the most popular - the New York Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Daily News, etc.

The Little Prince is considered the most widely read and translated book in the French language, and has been translated into 250 languages and dialects, including Braille for the blind. More than 140 million copies of the tale have been sold worldwide since 1943.

Reader's Digest magazine covers many topics from various areas of life, being a companion for any person.

Mark Twain crossed the Atlantic Ocean 29 times, visited Palestine and Odessa, wrote 30 books and more than 50 thousand letters. During his black-and-white era, he wore only white suits and had more than two dozen of them in his wardrobe. Plus the obligatory white hat and red socks.

The literary heritage of Sherlock Holmes is not limited to the stories and tales of Arthur Conan Doyle. Only officially published works about the brilliant detective from writers of different levels of fame number in the hundreds. Among these authors are Conan Doyle's son Adrian, Isaac Asimov and Neil Gaiman, Mark Twain and Stephen King, Boris Akunin and Sergei Lukyanenko.

"The Little Prince" was an atypical work for Exupery; before that, he had not written children's books. The tale was written in 1942 in New York shortly before the writer's death. In 1943, he achieved a return to the front, and in the summer of 1944 he went on a reconnaissance flight in his Lightning P-38 aircraft and did not return.

In the last ten years of his work, writer Sergei Dovlatov deliberately avoided sentences with words starting with the same letter. According to him, this rule helped him discipline himself, protecting him from verbosity and emptiness. Dovlatov’s works with this principle include “Suitcase”, “Reserve”, “Branch” and others.

Cosmopolitan - This world-famous magazine was founded back in 1886 as a literary magazine, and was published for the first time as a magazine for women in 1965.

In 1925, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."

One day, Chuck Palahniuk was relaxing in nature and got into an argument with a neighboring camp, after which he was soundly beaten. Returning to work with a bruised face, Palahniuk saw that none of his colleagues were asking what happened. Then the idea of the novel “Fight Club” was born.

The world-famous series of books about Harry Potter was first published in 1995, although it was written in 1992? JK Rowling, having written the first part of the series, for a very long time could not get her work published by a publishing house. All publishers refused to print this book, not believing that it could be successful.

James Barrie created the image of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother.

The novel “The Three Musketeers” was originally published chapter by chapter in the magazine Le Siècle from March to July 1844. This is a traditional novel with a continuation, a feuilleton novel: the chapter ended at the most interesting point so that the reader looked forward to the continuation. The main character d'Artagnan was a real person and his name was Charles de Batz de Castelmore.

Ken Kesey in his novel “Over the Cuckoo's Nest” did not just choose people with mental disabilities as his heroes. In 1959, at Stanford University, to earn money, Kesey went to work as a psychiatrist assistant at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. There he voluntarily participated in experiments to study the effects of LSD, mescaline and other psychedelics on the body.

Mark Twain's wife. Even in her youth, Laivi became disabled after she fell on the ice. Twain carefully looked after his wife and always helped her in everything. He was madly in love with Livey until her death in 1904. Twain suffered this loss with difficulty and never fully came to his senses until the end of his life. He simply did not want to live in the world without Livey.

on UNESCO statistics, Jules Verne is the most “translated” author in the world. His books have been published in 148 languages. In the 60s of the 19th century, the Russian Empire banned the publication of Jules Verne’s novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” in which spiritual censors found anti-religious ideas, as well as the danger of destroying trust in the Holy Scriptures and the clergy.

Friedrich Nietzsche never married and had no children. There were, of course, women in his life, and he proposed more than once, but was refused. Nietzsche wrote: “There have been only four women in my life. The two of them who made me even a little happier were prostitutes. Elizabeth (sister) was quite smart (and even too smart sometimes), but she refused to marry me.”

In the 1950s in the United States, best-selling book lists were compiled not only by actual sales, but also by customer requests in bookstores. Radio host Gene Shepard decided to make fun of this system and asked listeners of his show to ask in stores for the book “I, Libertine” by his fictional writer Frederick Ewing. This draw allowed the book to enter the official New York Times bestseller chart. After some time, a book with this title and pseudonym was actually published, although only after the hoax was exposed.

The English artist and poet Dante Rossetti buried his wife in 1862, placing his unpublished poems in the coffin. A few years later he was offered to publish a book, but the poet could not restore the poems from memory. Then his friends persuaded him to exhume his wife’s body, and the poems were published.

Among newspapers, perhaps the most authoritative, popular and influential is the American publication The New York Times. Almost everyone knows this name. The number of copies published on weekdays is more than one million one hundred thousand, and on holidays and weekends - more than one million six hundred thousand.

The world-famous book “Kama Sutra” includes not only a description of sexual positions, but also reflections on the topic of relationships between men and women and life in general? In fact, only a fifth of this Indian book (15 chapters out of 64) is devoted to sexual positions. Most of the book consists of reflections on love in general, on girls, on men, on relationships between the sexes, on courtship and charm.

Robert Louis Stevenson. The first film adaptation of the book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was filmed in 1908; since then it has been filmed more than 60 times. And our viewers are better known for the film adaptations of the novels “Treasure Island” (the 1988 cartoon of the same name is especially popular)

The dramatic searches of the founder of Cubism, Pablo Picasso, were inspired by his work on sets and costumes for surrealistic performances. Having decided to try himself not only as an artist and decorator, Picasso in the 1940s wrote two absurdist plays - “Desire Caught by the Tail” and “Four Little Girls”.

Scientists from Yale University decided to test whether there is a connection between reading books and life expectancy. They relied on data from a large national study (it involved more than 3 thousand people over 50, whose health was monitored for several years). All participants were divided into three groups: those who do not read at all, those who read up to 3.5 hours a week, and those who read more than 3.5 hours a week. On average, a love of reading extended life by two years, regardless of gender, income level, education or health.

The title of Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 was chosen because, supposedly, at this temperature paper spontaneously combusts (and in the plot of the novel, the government is trying to confiscate and burn all books from the population). In fact, paper spontaneously combusts at temperatures just above 450 degrees Celsius. According to Bradbury, the mistake was caused by the fact that when choosing the name, he consulted with a specialist from the fire service, who confused the temperature scales.

The merry fellow and drunkard Hasek would have become a symbol of Czech literature even without Švejk. He has about 1,500 short stories, pamphlets and other essays. The book “The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik” was supposed to consist of six parts, but Hasek managed to finish only three and begin the fourth. Death interrupted the author’s work on “Adventures,” and when the 39-year-old rebel was buried, the publisher asked Karel Vanek, Hasek’s friend, to finish the book.

William Shakespeare is recognized as the most “filmed” classic. “Hamlet” alone has been filmed 21 times! During the first years of the twentieth century, films based on Shakespeare's works were made in England and France, Germany and Italy, Denmark and America.

All the most interesting things about literature, books, newspapers, magazines and writers - the most interesting facts updated: December 31, 2017 by: website