blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Today is Thomas Harris' birthday. The legendary horror author is best known for the stories he spun surrounding serial-killer, Hannibal Lecter. Have you ever wondered what Harris' inspiration was for crafting one of the most notorious villains in all of literature? Is Lecter purely a figment of Harris' imagination? Or was there a real-life muse for the killer? Perhaps you find both options unsettling! But if you've ever been curious about the inspiration behind some of your favorite horror novels, read on.   

When one thinks of fraud, the first cases that come to mind may be corrupt money managers (à la Bernard Madoff) or bankers. Businesses like Enron and WorldCom may likewise ring a bell, as well. Why are we talking about fraud on a blog about books, though? Well, sadly the book buying and selling business has not escaped instances of fraud, either. In 2012, Allan Formhals was found guilty of ten counts of fraud. But he wasn't an unscrupulous banker, he was an antiques dealer who sold books on the internet. Formhals was convicted of forging signatures in books and purveying them on eBay as the genuine article.

Born in 1939, Trina Schart Hyman spent her childhood in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As a young adult, she studied at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, the Boston Museum School of Art, and the Swedish State Art School in Stockholm, Konstfackskolan. She published her first work in 1961. From 1972 to 1979, Hyman started working as an artist and illustrator for Cricket magazine for children, eventually becoming the art director. Throughout her career, Hyman won the Caldecott Medal once and Caldecott honors three times. She illustrated more than 150 books.

Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961) is universally considered one of the most important writers of the 20th century and certainly one of the most influential writers of the American literary canon. Hemingway's career stretched over three decades of war. He wrote travel journalism, seven novels, numerous novellas, short story collections, and works of nonfiction. His novels For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, and The Sun Also Rises are considered to be some of the most important works of literature written in the English language.

Hemingway's style has served as an influence to generations of writers and has helped form the landscape of modern American literature. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature, two of the highest honors a writer can receive. His work has been adapted numerous times for both television and film. One of the most notable adaptations of a beloved Hemingway novel is the 1958 film adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea starring Spencer Tracy.

Born in April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Maya Angelou had a difficult childhood. Her parents divorced when she was three, leaving Angelou to be raised by her grandmother. When she was seven, Angelou was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend. After testifying against him, her attacker was beaten to death in an alley, causing Angelou to believe her voice was too powerful. She decided to remain nearly mute for the next five years. During this time Angelou connected with the written word, paving the way for her future as a writer.

When "The Legend of Sleep Hollow" was published in 1820, the United States of America was a young nation. American-born authors were decades away from producing central classics like Leaves of Grass and Moby-Dick, and the cultural direction of this brave new world was anyone’s guess. The country was in need of a strong and talented writer to steer her on the right course. This author was Washington Irving.

For years now, film and television producers have been battling each other to create the one piece of fantasy media that will dominate all others. There was New Line’s Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) adaptions, HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-2019) series, New Line’s subsequent Hobbit (2012-2014) trilogy, and now, as of a blockbuster 2017 deal, Amazon Studios will be producing at least five seasons worth of television based on Tolkien’s iconic mythos and characters—a show that they, like those that have gone before them, hope will be the one series to rule them all. In this regard, it sometimes feels like these studios missed the point of Tolkien’s story entirely.

"What interests me about novelists as a species is the obsessiveness of the activity, the fact that novelists have to go on writing. I think that probably must come from a sense of the irrecoverable. In every novelist's life there is some more acute sense of loss than with other people, and I suppose I must have felt that. I didn't realize it, I suppose, till the last ten or fifteen years. In fact you have to write novels to begin to understand this. There's a kind of backwardness in the novel…an attempt to get back to a lost world." ~John Fowles, 1977 BBC interview

This week we celebrate author John Fowles, named by The Times as one of Britain's greatest writers. Best known for his novels The Collector (1963), The Magus (1966), and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), Fowles' work is most often categorized between modernism and postmodernism. 

Art is and does many things. It chronicles history, shows culture, and provides insight into artists. Despite the vast number of artists, there are only a few who hold consumers’ attention long after their death. Included with artists like Michelangelo and da Vinci, is Vincent van Gogh. From novels like Lust for Life to an episode of Doctor Who, the general masses remain fascinated with the man who is known for such talent and for cutting off his own ear.