Entertainment/Literature - other
Biography and Autobiography
Addicted – Tony Adams
The Kindness of Strangers – Kate Adie
Open – Andre Agassi
Pride and Perjury – memoirs of Jonathan Aitkin
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys – Viv Albertine
Reaching for the Moon – Buzz Aldrin
Infidel: My Life – Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 – Anne Applebaum
Basingstoke Boy – John Arlott
It’s not About the Bike, Every Second Counts, My Comeback – Lance Armstrong
Days of Grace – Arthur Ashe
Opening Up – Mike Atherton
The Necessary Aptitude – Pam Ayres
The Centre of the Bed – Joan Bakewell, who had an affair with Harold Pinter
Miracles of Life: from Shanghai to Shepperton – JG Ballard
Twin Tracks – Roger Bannister
An Education – memoir by Lynn Barber
My Take – Gary Barlow
My Side, My World, My Story – books by David Beckham
That Extra Half an Inch – Victoria Beckham
A Mingled Chime – Thomas Beecham
An Accidental MP – Martin Bell
My Spin on Cricket – Richie Benaud
More Time for Politics – Tony Benn
Free at Last – memoirs of Tony Benn
A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine: The Last Diaries – Tony Benn
Untold Stories – Alan Bennett
What’s it All About? – Cilla Black
Speaking for Myself – Cherie Blair
The Goldfish Bowl: Married to the Prime Minister – Cherie Blair
Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life – James Blake
Head On – Ian Botham
No Angel – biography of Bernie Ecclestone by Tom Bower
Sweet Revenge: The Intimate Life of Simon Cowell – Tom Bower
Take It Like A Man – Boy George
My Shit Life So Far – Frankie Boyle
Strong Woman: Ambition, Grit And A Great Pair Of Heels – Karren Brady
Look Back in Hunger – Jo Brand autobiography
My Booky Wook, Booky Wook 2 – Russell Brand
The Art of Captaincy – Mike Brearley
Beyond the Black Door – Sarah Brown
Small Man in a Book – Rob Brydon
Decision Points – George W Bush memoir
What’s It All About, The Elephant to Hollywood – Michael Caine memoirs
No Ordinary Joe – Joe Calzaghe
Diaries Volume One: Prelude to Power 1994-1997 – Alistair Campbell
Diaries Volume Two: Power and the People 1997-1999 – Alistair Campbell
Diaries Volume Three: Power and Responsibility 1999–2001 – Alistair Campbell
Biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson – Robert Caro
Look who it is!: My Story – Alan Carr memoir
Fighting All the Way – Barbara Castle
Landing on my Feet – Mike Catt
Mao – biography by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
My Soccer Life – Bobby Charlton
My Early Life: A Roving Commission is a 1930 book by Winston Churchill. It is a compilation of two of his earlier autobiographical works, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900) and Ian Hamilton's March (1900). The film Young Winston was based on this title
Alan Clark Diaries –
Volume 1 Diaries: In Power 1983–1992 (1993)
Volume 2 Diaries: Into Politics 1972–1982 (2000)
Volume 3 Diaries: The Last Diaries 1993–1999 (2002)
A Young Man’s Passage – Julian Clary
Rocket Man – Roger Clemens
My Life – Bill Clinton
Living History – Hillary Clinton
Running My Life – Sebastian Coe
Through My Eyes – Cheryl Cole
The Man in the White Suit – Ben Collins
Good Times! – Justin Lee Collins
The Outsider: My Autobiography – Jimmy Connors
May I Have Your Attention Please? – James Corden
Skating for Gold – Robin Cousins
I Don’t Mean to be Rude, But – Simon Cowell
Something’s Burning – Fanny Cradock
Mommie Dearest is a memoir and expose written by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of actress Joan Crawford
Of Molecules and Men – Francis Crick
The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister – Richard Crossman
My Story – Tom Daley
Dairy of a Genius – Salvador Dali
It’s in the Blood – Lawrence Dallaglio
Back from the Brink – Alistair Darling memoir
The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp – WH Davies
An Appetite for Wonder – Richard Dawkins
My Beautiful Game – Nancy Dell’Olio
Spilling the Beans – Clarissa Dickson-Wright
White Lightning – Allan Donald
The Way the Wind Blows – Alec Douglas-Home
Permission to Speak – Clive Dunn
My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell. Tells of the part of his childhood Durrell spent on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939
The Overloaded Ark – first Gerald Durrell book
A Zoo in My Luggage – Gerald Durrell
Against The Odds: An Autobiography – James Dyson
Unbelievable – Jesscia Ennis
A Cellarful of Noise – Brian Epstein
It’s Not What You Think, Memoirs of a Fruitcake – Chris Evans
Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins – Rupert Everett
My Wicked, Wicked Ways – Errol Flynn
Captain Scott – biography by Ranulph Fiennes
Better Than Sex – Mick Fitzgerald
Behind the Shades – Duncan Fletcher
The Pen and the Sword – biography of Jonathan Swift by Michael Foot
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future – Michael J Fox
Lester – biography of Lester Pigott, written by Dick Francis
Born Lucky – John Francombe
My Father’s Fortune: A Life – memoir of Michael Frayn
Notes from a Small Soprano – Lesley Garrett
The Road Ahead – Bill Gates
The First Lady of Bond – Eunice Gayson, who played Sylvia Trench
To Be, or Not...to Bop – Dizzy Gillespie
Spitfire: The Biography – Jonathan Glancey
Peeling Onions – Gunter Grass
The Age of Turbulence – memoir of Alan Greenspan
Daddy, We Hardly Knew You – Germaine Greer
Good-Bye to all that – Robert Graves
This One’s On Me – Jimmy Greaves
The Motorcycle Diaries is a memoir that traces the early travels of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, then a 23-year-old medical student, and his friend Alberto Granado
Bad Girls Go Everywhere – biography of Helen Gurley Brown
William Pitt the Younger, William Wilberforce – biographies by William Hague
The Autobiography of Malcolm X – biography written by Alex Haley
Provided you don’t Kiss me – biography of Brian Clough by Duncan Hamilton
On the Edge – Richard Hammond
The Two of Us – biography of John Thaw by Sheila Hancock
Imperium – Robert Harris’s fictional biography of Cicero
Lustrum – Robert Harris. About the life of Cicero
Making Waves – David Hasselhoff
Feel – biography of Robbie Williams by Chris Heath
A Moveable Feast – memoir by Ernest Hemingway about his years as an expatriate writer in Paris in the 1920s
God’s Architect – biography of Augustus Pugin by Rosemary Hill
Hitch-22: A Memoir – Christopher Hitchens
Barefaced Lies and Boogie-Woogie Boasts – Jools Holland
With a Little Bit of Luck – Stanley Holloway
A Fart in a Colander – Roy Hudd
The Working Man’s Ballet – Alan Hudson
Next to you – Gloria Hunniford
Robert Peel, a Biography – Douglas Hurd
Human Race Get Off Your Knees – David Icke
Howard Hughes: My Story – fake autobiography written by Clifford Irving
Enter the Bear Pit – John Jacobs, about the 1991 Ryder Cup match at Brookline
Bit of a Blur – memoirs of Alex James
Beyond a Boundary – a memoir on cricket written by the Trinidadian Marxist intellectual C. L. R. James
Life at Number 10 – Neil Jenkins
The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz – Ron Jeremy
This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood – volume 1 of Alan Johnson memoirs
Please, Mr Postman – volume 2 of Alan Johnson memoirs
Unforgivable Blackness – Jack Johnson
Sent Off at Gunpoint – Willie Johnston
3,096 Days – Natascha Kampusch
The Sound of Laughter – Peter Kay
The Second Half – Roy Keane
Journey of a Thousand Miles – Lang Lang
Tall, Dark and Gruesome – Christopher Lee autobiography
Me Cheeta – James Lever. Spoof Hollywood memoir narrated by the chimp from the Tarzan movies
A Question of Honour – Lord Levy
Strikingly Different – Gary Lineker
Night Train – Sonny Liston
Old Stoneface – John Lowe
I Should Have Been at Work – Des Lynam
Some Sunny Day – Vera Lynn
It Just Occurred To Me – Humphrey Lyttleton
Race against Time – Ellen MacArthur
Agent Zigzag – Ben Macintyre. Biography of WWII double agent Eddie Chapman
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies – Ben Macintyre
A Spy Among Friends – Ben Macintyre. About Kim Philby
Keeping it Real – Jodie Marsh
Stuart: A Life Backwards is a biography by Alexander Masters of his friend Stuart Shorter. The book starts from Shorter's adult life, and works backwards to trace Shorter's life through his troubled childhood
Oh, Carol! – Carol McGiffin
Life and Laughing: My Story – Michael McIntyre
DC Confidential – memoirs of Christopher Meyer, former British Ambassador to USA
American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City Bombing – a biography by New York journalists Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck
Timebends – Arthur Miller
In the Frame – Helen Mirren
Hons and Rebels – memoirs of Jessica Mitford
Beware of the Dog – Brian Moore
Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography Vol. One: Not For Turning – Charles Moore
The Insider – memoirs of Piers Morgan
Keats, Philip Larkin – biographies by Andrew Motion
Momentum – Mo Mowlam
Chronicles of Wasted Time – Malcolm Muggeridge
Decline and Fall: Diaries – Chris Mullin
Coming of Age – Andy Murray
Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter – Jenni Murray
Red – Gary Neville
So Me – Graham Norton
Praying to the Aliens – Gary Numan
At My Mother’s Knee, The Devil Rides Out – Paul O’Grady
A Simples Life – Aleksandr Orlov
Prick up Your Ears – Joe Orton
21 Years Gone – Jack Osbourne
Extreme – Sharon Osbourne (volume 1)
Survivor – Sharon Osbourne (volume2)
Loitering With Intent – Peter O’Toole memoir
Off the Record – Michael Owen
Diaries 1969 – 1979: The Python Years – Michael Palin
Between the Lines – Victoria Pendleton
KP: The Autobiography – Kevin Pietersen
A Lifetime in a Race – Matthew Pinsent
Growing Pains – Billie Piper
Seeing Things – Oliver Postgate
Great Hatred, Little Room – Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair’s principal adviser on Northern Ireland
The Confessions of a Revolutionary – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to call himself an ‘anarchist’
Who Ate All the Pies – Mick Quinn
Margrave of the Marshes – John Peel and Shiela Ravenscroft
My Story So Far – Paula Radcliffe
Humble Pie – Gordon Ramsay
Between a Rock and a Hard Place – Aron Ralston
Colditz: The Colditz Story – Pat Reid
Unsinkable – Debbie Reynolds autobiography
Life – Keith Richards
Farewell But Not Goodbye – Bobby Robson
Why Do I Say These Things – Jonathan Ross
What if I Had Never Tried It – Valentino Rossi
Known and Unknown – Donald Rumsfeld
A Champion’s Mind – Pete Sampras
Memoirs of a Professional Cad – memoirs of George Sanders
Bonkers: My Life in Laughs – Jennifer Saunders
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story – Arnold Schwarzenegger
South – Ernest Shackleton. Account of the Endurance expedition
Warrior – Ariel Sharon
An Honourable Deception – Clare Short
Kiss and Make-Up – Gene Simmons
I Put a Spell on you – Nina Simone
Strange Place, Questionable People, News From No Man’s Land – John Simpson memoirs
Put Me Back on My Bike – biography of Tommy Simpson
High Spirits – Joan Sims
Toast – Nigel Slater
Sailing Alone Around the World – Joshua Slocum
Stori Telling – Tori Spelling
Winning is Not Enough –Jackie Stewart
Last Man Standing – Jack Straw
What You See Is What You Get – Alan Sugar
The Breaks are Off – Graham Swann
If I Don’t Write It, Nobody Else Will – Eric Sykes
The Downing Street Years, The Path to Power – Margaret Thatcher
Rising from the Ashes – Graham Thorpe
Bad Intentions – Mike Tyson
Calling the Shots – Michael Vaughan
Unforgivable Blackness – biography of boxer Jack Johnson by Geoffrey Ward, which won the 2006 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award
The Hare with Amber Eyes is a family memoir by Edmund de Waal and tells the story of his family the Ephrussi, who were once a very wealthy European Jewish banking dynasty
Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken – Murray Walker
Heart of the Lion – Courtney Walsh
Will This Do? – Auberon Waugh
Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It – Mae West
The Other Side of Nowhere – Daniella Westbrook
Still Digging – Mortimer Wheeler
In Pursuit of Glory, My Time – Bradley Wiggins
Camp David – David Walliams
Brian Clough: The Biography – Jonathan Wilson
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson
Mustn’t Grumble, Is it me? – Terry Wogan
A Writer’s Diary – Virginia Woolf
Rolling with the Stones – Bill Wyman
Awards
The TS Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society, of which TS Eliot was a founding member. First awarded in 1953. Prize – £10,000
Costa Book Awards (known as the Whitbread Awards until 2005) – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry, Children’s Book
Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (previously called Women's Prize for Fiction (2013), Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12) and Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08)) is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. The winner of the prize receives £30,000, along with a bronze sculpture called the Bessie created by artist Grizel Niven
Joseph Pulitzer – newspaper publisher, born in Hungary. Pulitzer Prizes first awarded in 1917. Pulitzer Prizes are administered by Columbia University in New York City
Forward Prize – for contemporary poetry
The Kate Greenaway Medal was established in honour of the children's illustrator, Kate Greenaway. The medal is given annually to an outstanding work of illustration in children's literature. It is awarded by CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The first award was made to Edward Ardizzone for Tim All Alone in 1956
The Carnegie Medal in Literature was established in the UK in 1936 in honour of Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. It is awarded to an outstanding book for children and young adult readers
The WH Smith Thumping Good Read award ran from 1992 to 2003
The O. Henry Prize is the only yearly prize given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award was first presented in 1919
Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh
The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded for a book of verse published by someone from the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth realm
Samuel Johnson Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes for non-fiction writing, and is currently managed by the BBC
Prix Goncourt – a prize in French literature, given by the academie Goncourt to the author of ‘the best and most imaginative prose work of the year’. First awarded in 1903
Caine Prize for African Writing is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original short story by an African writer
Miguel de Cervantes Prize, established in 1976, is awarded annually to honour the lifetime achievement of an outstanding writer in the Spanish language
Diagram Prize is a humorous literary award that is given annually to the book with the oddest title
Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the UK's only literary award for comic literature
Ignatz Awards are intended to recognize outstanding achievements in comics and cartooning. The Ignatz Awards are named in honour of George Herriman and his strip Krazy Kat
Gold Dagger Award is an award given annually by the Crime Writers' Association for the best crime novel of the year
John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children
PEN/Pinter Prize is an annual literary award launched in 2009 by English PEN in honour of the late Harold Pinter, who had been an active member of PEN's Writers in Prison Committee
Benson Medal is a medal awarded by the Royal Society of Literature
Wellcome Trust Book Prize is awarded annually for the best fiction or non-fiction book centred around medicine
Orwell Prize is for political writing of outstanding quality. Three prizes are awarded each year: one for a book, one for journalism and another for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to 'make political writing into an art'
Each year since 1993, Literary Review presents the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author who produces the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. First winner was Melvyn Bragg, with A Time to Dance
Folio Prize is a literary award sponsored by the London-based publisher The Folio Society. It is given to an English-language book of fiction published in the UK by an author from any country. The first award was in March 2014
Premio Planeta de Novela is a Spanish literary prize, awarded since 1952 for a novel written in Spanish. Financially, it is the second most valuable literary award in the world after the Nobel Prize for Literature
Miles Franklin Award is an annual literary prize awarded to an Australian novel
British Book Awards or Nibbies are literary awards for the best UK writers and their works, administered by The Bookseller
For information on the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize see: Booker Prize
Literary groups
Thirties poets – included Louis MacNeice, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis. They were also known as MacSpaunday, and the Pylon Poets, for their use of industrial imagery. The actual term 'pylon' was derived from Spender's 1933 poem The Pylons
The Generation of '27 was an influential group of poets that arose in Spanish literary circles between 1923 and 1927
Cavalier poets – a school of English poets of the 17th century, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War. The best known of the Cavalier poets are Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling
The Petrashevsky Circle was a Russian literary discussion group organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky. The purpose of the circle was to discuss Western philosophy (specifically Hegel and others) and literature which was officially banned by the Imperial government of Nicholas I. Nicholas, worried that the revolutions of 1848 would spread to Russia, mistook the group (which included Fyodor Dostoevsky) for a subversive revolutionary organization. He closed the circle in 1849 and arrested its members
The Inklings was a literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford. Its members, mostly academics at the university, included J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. It met between the 1930s and the 1960s at the Eagle and Child pub
The Fireside Poets (also known as the Schoolroom or Household Poets) were a group of 19th century American poets from New England. The group is usually described as comprising Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes
Metaphysical poets – a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them. Included John Donne and Andrew Marvell
The Movement was a term coined by J. D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, in 1954 to describe a group of writers including Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin
Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of (mainly French) 20th century mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced mathematics
Gruppe 47 (Group 47) was an influential literary association in Germany after World War II
Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth and Shelley – The Romantic Poets
Movements
Ezra Pound founded the Imagist movement in poetry
Sturm und Drang – means ‘storm and stress’. 18th century German literary movement. Chief exponents were Goethe and Schiller. Chief works are Goethe’s play Gotz von Berlichingen, his epistolary novel The Sorrow of Young Werther and the poem Prometheus
Stream of consciousness is a literary technique which seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair. Examples – Ulysses, To the Lighthouse, The Sound and the Fury
Imagism was a movement in early 20th century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets, who were by and large content to work within that tradition
Dirty Realism – a North American literary movement born in the 1970s in which the narrative is stripped down to its fundamental features. Dirty realism authors include the movement ‘godfather’ Charles Bukowski and Cormac McCarthy
Scandinavian noir or Scandinavian crime fiction, also called Nordic noir, is a genre comprising crime fiction written in Scandinavia with certain common characteristics, typically in a realistic style with a dark, morally complex mood
Early literature
Kalevala – epic poem of Finland
Beowulf – a heroic epic poem (3182 lines). In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of a Germanic tribe from southern Sweden called the Geats, travels to Denmark to help defeat a monster named Grendel. Beowulf’s sword is called Hrunting
Grendel is one of three antagonists, along with Grendel's mother and the dragon, in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf (c. 700–1000 A.D.). In the poem, Grendel is feared by all but Beowulf
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Ancient Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known literary works. Scholars surmise that a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the mythological hero-king Gilgamesh, thought to be a ruler in the 3rd millennium BC. It includes the Gilgamesh flood myth. The first half of the story discusses Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop him oppressing the people of Uruk
I Ching, also known as the Classic of Changes or Book of Changes in English, is an ancient divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics
Zhuangzi is an ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period (3rd century BC) which contains stories and anecdotes that exemplify the carefree nature of the ideal Daoist sage. Named for its traditional author, "Master Zhuang" (Zhuangzi)
Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, in chronological order, are: Romance of the Three Kingdoms (14th century), Water Margin (also known as Outlaws of the Marsh) (14th century), Journey to the West (16th century), Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone) (first block print 1791)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is based upon events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era, starting in 168 and ending with the reunification of the land in 280
Water Margin details the trials and tribulations of 108 outlaws during the mid Song Dynasty
Originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty, and even though no direct evidence of its authorship survives, Journey to the West has been ascribed to the scholar Wú Chéng'ēn since the 20th century. In western countries, the tale is also often known simply as Monkey
Dream of the Red Chamber is believed to be semi-autobiographical; mirroring the fortunes of author Cao Xueqin's own family
La Chanson de Roland – oldest major work of French literature. The story told in the poem is based on a minor historical incident, the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye – first book printed in the English language by William Caxton, 1474
Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers – printed by Caxton in 1477
Encyclopedia – edited by Diderot and d’Amelbert. Published in France between 1751 and 1772
Prose Edda is an Old Norse compilation made in Iceland in the early 13th century. Together with the Poetic Edda, it comprises the major store of pagan Scandinavian mythology. The work is often assumed to have been written, or at least compiled, by the Icelandic scholar and historian Snorri Sturluson
Codex Argenteus, ‘Silver Book’, is a 6th century manuscript, originally containing bishop Ulfilas's 4th century translation of the Bible into the Gothic language
Only four great codices have survived to the present day: Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus
Codex Sinaiticus or ‘Sinai Bible’ is one of the four great uncial codices, an ancient, handwritten copy of the Greek Bible
Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. It may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana. With more than 74,000 verses, long prose passages, and some 1.8 million words in total, it is the longest epic poem in the world. Epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Tells the life story of Krishna
Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the Hindu sage (maharishi) Valmiki and an important part of the Hindu canon. It consists of 24,000 verses in seven books, and 500 cantos and tells the story of Rama, whose wife Sita is abducted by the demon (Rakshasa) king of Lanka, Ravana
The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, which according to St. Augustine was referred to as The Golden Ass by Apuleius, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety
One Thousand and One Nights (is a collection of stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights. The ruler is Shahryar and his wife Scheherazade
Ali Baba, Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor are all characters in The Arabian Nights
The Perfumed Garden is a fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual and work of erotic literature
Dresden Codex is a pre-Columbian Maya book of the eleventh or twelfth century of the Yucatecan Maya in Chichen Itza. This Maya codex is believed to be a copy of an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier. It is the oldest book written in the Americas known to historians
Bedford Hours is a French late medieval book of hours. It dates to the early fifteenth century
The book of hours is a Christian devotional book popular in the Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript
Mabinogian is a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. Translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest
Popol Vuh is a corpus of mytho-historical narratives of the K'iche' Mayan kingdom in Guatemala's western highlands. The title translates as ‘Book of the People’
The Song of the Nibelungs is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table
Diamond Sutra is a Mahayana Buddhist sutra, the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book
Nag Hammadi library is a collection of Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer
Publishers
Penguin Books was founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane. First book was Ariel: a Shelley Romance by Andre Maurois
Pelican Books – part of Penguin Books. Designed to educate the reading public rather than entertain. George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism was the first Pelican book, published in 1937
Puffin Books is the children's imprint of British publishers Penguin Books. First book was Worzel Gummidge, published in 1941
Pocket Books – US equivalent of Penguin books
Ian Allan Publishing is a UK publisher, established in 1942, which specializes in transport magazines and books
Translation of Homer’s Odyssey was the first Penguin Classic, published in 1946
Harry Potter books are published by Bloomsbury
Nigel Newton is the founder and head of Bloomsbury
Black Lace – specializes in erotica and erotic romance written by female authors. Part of Virgin Books
The Observer's Books were a series of small, pocket sized books, published by Frederick Warne & Co in the United Kingdom from 1937 to 2003
Poet laureate
John Dryden – first poet laureate (1668)
1692: Nahum Tate
Thomas Gray was offered the position in 1757, but he declined
1813: Robert Southey, after Walter Scott refused the post
1843: William Wordsworth
1850: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on the refusal of Samuel Russell
Alfred Lord Tennyson served the longest time in office as Poet Laureate (1850–1892)
1896: Alfred Austin, on the refusal of William Morris
1913: Robert Bridges
1930: John Masefield
1967: Cecil Day-Lewis
1972: Sir John Betjeman
1984: Ted Hughes, on the refusal of Philip Larkin
1999: Andrew Motion
2009: Carol Ann Duffy
2019: Simon Armitage
The current salary is £5,750 and a barrel of sherry (originally known as a ‘butt of sack’)
Miscellaneous
Aga Saga – fictional family sagas dealing with British ‘middle-class country or village life’. The term was coined in 1992 by novelist Terence Blacker to describe specifically the work of Joanna Trollope
Great American Novel – the concept of a novel that is distinguished in both craft and theme as being the most accurate representative of the zeitgeist in the United States at the time of its writing, e.g. The Great Gatsby
Parallel novel – a subset of metafiction. Parallel novels exist within or derive from the framework of another work of fiction and so refer to it in a meta-fashion, but they are distinct in that they always refer to a previous work, typically by another author, e.g. Wide Sargasso Sea parallels Jane Eyre
Picaresque novel – a genre of prose fiction which depicts the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire
Slash fiction – a genre of fan fiction. It focuses on the depiction of sexual or romantic relationships between two or more male characters, who are not necessarily engaged in relationships in the canon universe
Dime novels – the antecedent of today’s mass market paperbacks, comic books, and even television shows and movies based on the dime novel genres. In the modern age, dime novel has become a term to describe any quickly written, lurid potboiler
Hardboiled crime fiction – refers to a literary style pioneered by Dashiell Hammett in the late 1920s and refined by Raymond Chandler beginning in the late 1930s. Hardboiled fiction, most commonly associated with detective stories, is distinguished by an unsentimental portrayal of crime, violence, and sex
Bildungsroman – a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which character change is thus extremely important, e.g. Anne of Green Gables
Roman fleuve – a French novel in the form of a long chronicle of a family or other social group
Parnassianism – a French literary style which began during the positivist period of the 19th century. The style was influenced by the author Theophile Gautier (first person to use ‘art for art’s sake’) as well as the philosophical work of Arthur Schopenhauer
Wuxia (‘martial hero’) – a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists
Hunter Stockton Thompson is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting in which the reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become the central figures of their stories
A book comprising previously published, related works is often called an omnibus edition of those works, or simply an omnibus
Purple prose – a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. The term is derived from a reference by the Roman poet Horace Canon, in the context of a fictional universe, comprises those novels, stories, films, etc., that are considered to be genuine or officially sanctioned, and those events, characters, settings, etc., that are considered to have existence within the fictional universe
in Ars Poetica
Blank verse – unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Hexameter – a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid
Iambic pentameter – the most common verse line in English poetry. Shakespeare’s plays are written almost exclusively in iambic pentameter
A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode
There are three typical forms of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and irregular
UNESCO's City of Literature program is part of its Creative Cities Network which was launched in 2004
World Book Capital is a title bestowed by UNESCO to a city in recognition of the quality of its programs to promote books and reading and the dedication of all players in the book industry
William Smellie – first editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica
After Ian Fleming's death in 1964, subsequent James Bond novels were written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), John Pearson, John Gardner, Raymond Benson and Charlie Higson
Simonides was the first poet to write poetry for payment
The three great Athenian tragedians – Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides
The ‘big three’ of 17th century France were Moliere, Racine and Corneille
Sons of Ben – the dramatists who were overtly and admittedly influenced by Ben Jonson's drama
‘Queens of Crime’ – Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh
Harry Turtledove – dubbed ‘The Master of Alternative History’. Within that genre he is known both for creating original alternative history scenarios such as survival of the Byzantine Empire or an alien invasion in the middle of the Second World War
Kalidasa is widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language. Known as the ‘Shakespeare of Sanskrit’
Ian McMillan – poet, is known as the ‘Bard of Barnsley’
Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from New York: Daniel (David) Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee, to write detective fiction. In a successful series of novels that covered forty-two years, Ellery Queen was not only the name of the author, but also that of the detective-hero of the stories. The Roman Hat Mystery was the first Ellery Queen novel
C.K. Scott Moncrieff was a Scottish writer, most famous for his English translation of most of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, which he published under the Shakespearean title Remembrance of Things Past
Polybius and Livy wrote of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps
The Rambler was a periodical by Samuel Johnson
Who's Who has been published since 1849 by A & C Black
Angry Young Men – is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul. Leading members included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the Royal Court Theatre's press officer to promote John Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger
Russell Blake is a leader self-publisher. Books include the JET series
Austen Project – six novelists have been asked to rewrite the six finished novels of Jane Austen – Sense and Sensibility – Joanna Trollope; Emma – Alexander McCall Smith; Northanger Abbey – Val McDermid; Pride and Prejudice – Curtis Sittenfeld; Mansfield Park - ?; Persuasion - ?
Originally, Janet and John stories were published by Row Peterson and Company as the Alice and Jerry books in the USA
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African – Olaudah Equiano, who was a former slave, and a leading influence in the abolition of slavery
Larousse Gastronomique is an encyclopedia of gastronomy. The majority of the book is French cuisine
Lyrical Ballads – written by Coleridge and Wordsworth
Newgate novels (or Old Bailey novels) were novels published in England from the late 1820s until the 1840s that were thought to glamorize the lives of the criminals they portrayed. Among the earliest Newgate novels were Thomas Gaspey's Richmond (1827) and History of George Godfrey (1828), Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford (1830) and Eugene Aram (1832), and William Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood (1834), which featured Dick Turpin as its hero
