blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

Oscar Wilde is often remembered for his bright wit and lavish lifestyle as well as his works The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Master of the epigram, he coined phrases such as "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken" and "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." He lived much of his life as an evangelist for the Aesthetic movement in art, believing that life should be beautiful. What life delivered him, however, was not so idyllic.

It would be an understatement to say that Russian writer Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn had a complicated relationship with his motherland. Despite suffering constant persecution during his adult life, Solzhenitsyn remained faithful to his culture, language, and countrymen. He revealed the cruel reality of the Soviet system to the world in both his fiction and his memoirs, for which he received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. The world applauded him; the USSR tried to ruin him.

Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts.” Affectionately referred to as “Gabo” by nearly everyone in the Spanish speaking community, García Márquez solidified his stature as a national icon with his Nobel Prize. Following his reception of the award, his Colombian countrymen reverently referred to García Márquez as “Nuestro Nobel,” or “our Nobel Prize winner.”

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888.  A Nobel laureate, The New York Times described his writing as giving "new meaning to English-language poetry,” Due to a congenital double hernia, T. S. Eliot spent much of his childhood reading rather than running around with other children. His family eventually moved to New England where he attended Harvard. At age 22, he moved to Paris; four years later, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood.  He later claimed, “To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."

I want to write something new, something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned. - F. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter in 1922, as he began to write the novel which became The Great Gatsby

Few authors ever produce a work that outgrows itself. One so rich in mood and aesthetic distinction that it produces a cultural impression familiar even to those who have never peered between the book's covers. Books of this pedigree often bring to life the monstrous (Frankenstein, Dracula, Moby Dick), which makes the undeniable staying power of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterwork The Great Gatsby (1925) even more peculiar. There are no beasts in this Roaring Twenties novel. Rather, Fitzgerald entrances us with his exuberant setting and a tragic love story marked by postwar trauma and the trappings of the American Dream.

Herbert George Wells was born on September 21, 1866 in Bromley, England. His father was a professional cricket player who also ran an unsuccessful porcelain and cricket supply business. Wells was a bright child who began reading at a young age—kindling a life-long passion for literature. In 1874, he began schooling at Thomas Morley’s Commercial Academy where he learned trades specific for retail occupations. His education was cut short in 1880, however, when his father’s leg injury put an end to his cricket career and left the family financially unstable.

Almost everyone who graduated from an American high school in the last few decades knows William Golding as the author of Lord of the Flies. However, his body of work - for which he was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature - is much more extensive. He was a poet and a playwright, as well as the author of essays, short stories, and fifteen novels.

Roald Dahl is known throughout the world as a beloved author of children’s books. What is less well known is that he also spent several years as a British spy during World War II. 

When England declared war on Germany in 1939, Dahl enlisted in the Royal Air Force (RAF). On one of his first missions, he crash landed his plane in enemy territory and was rescued by a British patrol. Dahl soldiered on for a few more months, but when it became clear that his injuries were interfering with his ability to fly, he was sent back to England to recover.

D. H. Lawrence, born September 11, 1885, is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20^th century. He was a novelist, poet, and painter. Although he published a dozen novels and many short story collections, no single work brought him more fame or infamy than his book Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Three facts:

• Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9th, 1828 in the Tula region of Russia.
• He was a prolific writer of political and social philosophy, plays, essays, novels, and short stories.
• His novel War and Peace is widely considered one of the greatest books ever written.

Beyond these basic statements, however, there is almost nothing simple that can be said about the classic novelist. Tolstoy as a subject is almost as complicated as the novels he wrote.