LITERATURE

6 Fast Facts About Nelly Sachs

The Nobel Prize-winning poet, who escaped the Holocaust, is the subject of today's Google Doodle.

The One Harry Potter Character JK Rowling Regrets Killing Off

"I seemed to have him kidnapped and killed for no good reason."

Hajotthu, Wikimedia Commons // Public domain

A 17th-Century Noblewoman's Rare Poems About War-Torn England Can Be Read Online

Hester Pulter broke convention—and the expectations of her gender and class—by writing about science and politics.

10 Fascinating Facts About Madeleine L'Engle

The 'A Wrinkle in Time' author, who would have turned 100 years old today, saw her most famous work get rejected 26 times.

George RR Martin Shares How His Pet Turtles Inspired Him to Write

A series of dime store turtles eventually led him to The Iron Throne.

George RR Martin's New Book Is Hiding Muppet Easter Eggs

'House Henson' has a certain ring to it.

JK Rowling's Impressive Net Worth Revealed

She's the richest author on the planet.

Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' Has Been Digitized for the First Time, 70 Years After it Was Published

Make time to read one of the most disturbing short stories of all time this Halloween.

A photograph of Sylvia Plath on her grave.

12 Fascinating Facts About Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's novel 'The Bell Jar' wasn't published under her real name—or in the United States—until years after her death.

To Kill a Mockingbird Named America's Favorite Novel

Roughly 4 million readers cast their votes.

8 Facts About Niccolò Machiavelli

His name became synonymous with ruthless scheming—but was this Florentine philosopher of the Renaissance really that bad?

The Gruesome Medieval Masquerade That Inspired Edgar Allan Poe

"The eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass."

By Napoleon Sarony - Library of Congress, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

25 of Oscar Wilde's Wittiest Quotes

Oscar Wilde, who was famous for his wit, once advised: "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

JK Rowling's Newest Obsession? A Teenager's 350-Year-Old Math Notebook

Richard Beale's sketch of a chicken wearing trousers has gone viral.

12 R.L. Stine Quotes

You would never know from his books that Goosebumps and Fear Street author R.L. Stine used to write joke books for kids under the name Jovial Bob Stine

10 Recent Bestsellers People Tried to Ban (and Why)

Each year, hundreds of formal challenges asking for the removal of “inappropriate” books from shelves and syllabi are filed with schools and libraries across the country.

The 35 Most Frequently Banned Books of the Past 5 Years

The Holy Bible is regularly challenged for having a "religious viewpoint."

Jaap Buitendijk, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

4 Things JK Rowling Just Revealed About Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

3. The Nagini film theory is incorrect.

10 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

Celebrate Banned Books Week by giving these once-censored classics a read.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was not a fan of the exclamation point!

6 Punctuation Marks Hated by Famous Authors

“Cut out all these exclamation points," F. Scott Fizgerald once said. "An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

Newly Discovered Documents Reveal Details of William Shakespeare's Early Years, Based on His Father's Financial Fall

His father's grave debts probably influenced the Bard's writing on class and money.

George R.R. Martin Says Game of Thrones Could've Gone on Much Longer

#WesterosForever

12 Scrumdiddlyumptious Facts About Roald Dahl

A world without Roald Dahl would be a world without Oompa Loompas, Snozzcumbers, or Muggle-Wumps. And who would ever want to live in a world like that?

Author Roald Dahl with his then-wife, actress Patricia Neal.

9 Splendiferous Words from the Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary

The dictionary goes from aardvark to zozimus because "every dictionary has to start with aardvark; otherwise it would have to start with aback, which is just too boring."

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