2 August: Middlemarch

On this date in 1869, George Eliot began work on her novel, Middlemarch. 10 things you might not know about this book.

1. The subtitle is “A Study of Provincial Life.”

2. The novel is set in a fictional town in the Midlands of England, from from 1829 to 1832, called, yes, you guessed it, Middlemarch. It’s characters include members of all social classes in the town: landed gentry, clergy, doctors and professionals, farmers, and labourers.

3. It’s written in the style of realism, which is a literary genre which attempts to show life as it really is, focussing on everyday activities and the mundane aspects of life. In later times, the kitchen sink drama is a modern example of realism. In Middlemarch, things that were in the news at the time form a backdrop – the Reform Act 1832, early railways, the accession of King William IV and advances in medicine.

4. It first appeared as a series of eight books in 1871 and 1872. This was at a time when three volumes was the norm. George Eliot had been concerned that the novel she was writing was too long, but the publisher John Blackwood suggested that the novel be brought out in eight two-monthly parts, as Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables had been.

5. In 1869, George Eliot made a new year’s resolution to write a novel called Middlemarch which was essentially the story of the doctor, Lydgate. She listed this in her journal on New Year’s Day 1869 as one of her tasks for the year, although she didn’t start writing until August. She was also writing a separate story entitled Miss Brooke, which was Dorothea’s story.

6. The process of writing doesn’t even go smoothly for the greatest novelists. Eliot began writing in August, but by September was in the middle of a crisis of confidence about it. Also real life was getting in the way as her partner’s son was dying of tuberculosis, so she stopped writing it completely for a while.

7. While writing Middlemarch, Eliot collected hundreds of literary quotations, from poets, historians, playwrights, philosophers, and critics in eight different languages, which she kept in a notebook.

8. Middlemarch broke convention in a number of ways as well as the number of instalments mentioned above. Female writers of the time were expected to focus on the courtship stage of a relationship with marriage being the end goal, the happy ending. Eliot married her characters off early in the book and explored their marriages breaking down as they realise they’ve made a terrible mistake and married the wrong person. Some critics of the time dismissed Middlemarch as too gloomy for a “woman writer.” However, novelist Virginia Woolf called it “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”

9. Middlemarch has been made into a TV series at least twice, and there’s even an opera based on it. Called Middlemarch in Spring, the music was written by Allen Shearer and the libretto by Claudia Stevens. The opera only deals with Dorothea’s story, and has a cast of just six.

10. It has never been made into a film although English director Sam Mendes is said to have considered it.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

2 July: Blithe Spirit

On this date in 1941, 85 years ago, Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit premièred in London. Ten facts about the play.

1. The title is taken from Shelley's poem To a Skylark, ("Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert").

2. What’s it about? A novelist called Charles Condomine holds a séance at his house in order to gather material for his next book. The clairvoyant medium is called Madame Arcati. The séance has the unfortunate side effect of summoning the ghost of Condomine’s deceased first wife, Elvira, who continues to haunt him afterwards and tries to disrupt his second marriage to Ruth. Charles can see and hear the ghost; Ruth cannot. Elvira’s plot to get Charles to join her in the spirit world by sabotaging his car backfires when Ruth uses the car and is killed instead. Her spirit returns to get revenge on Elvira. Charles can’t see Ruth, but can tell something is tormenting Elvira. He calls Madame Arcati back to exorcise both the spirits, but instead she unintentionally materialises Ruth. It turns out, one of the housemaids is psychic and has been the conduit for the ghosts. With that knowledge, Madame Arcati manages to make the ghosts vanish, but warns that just because Charles can’t see them doesn’t mean they are not still there potentially causing havoc and that he should move as far away as possible. He takes her advice and after he leaves the ghosts trash the house.

3. Coward had been toying with the idea of a play about ghosts for some time. His original idea was not unlike the concept of the BBC TV series Ghosts: an old house haunted by spirits from different periods in history, only set in Paris, with humour arising from their different attitudes to things. However, he could never quite figure out an exact plot.

4. The breakthrough came after Coward’s flat was bombed during The Blitz and he took a holiday in Wales, Portmeirion on the coast of Snowdonia, to be exact. His companion for the trip was Joyce Carey, an actress who was writing a play about John Keats. Sitting on the beach one morning, Coward ended up bouncing ideas off of Carey and later wrote that by lunchtime he had a basic plot, the title and the names of the main characters. The next morning, Coward sat down at a Typewriter and started writing.

5. The script changed little from that first draft, although he did tone down some of Madame Arcati’s humorous lines as he decided she should be a person who took herself rather seriously.

6. He had to change the name of one person referred to in the séance. The late “old Mrs Leggatt” had to change because of a tragic event in real life. Lord Monkton’s secretary Shelagh Leggatt was killed in a plane crash around that time and it made the news. The script was immediately changed to say ‘Mrs Plummet’, which, you could argue, wasn’t much better!

7. The reception from critics was positive. The Manchester Guardian thought it "not untouched by genius of a sort”, and The Times said it compared favourably, not only with Coward’s previous plays but also with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

8. This was in spite of initial reservations that writing a comedy about death in the middle of a world war was a bit of a risk. The risk paid off, though, and showed Coward’s sheer talent as he was able to pull it off. Blithe Spirit ran for 1,997 performances, a new record for a non-musical play in London.

9. Charles Condomine was played by Coward himself at some points during the play’s tour and also by John Gielgud. The role of Madam Arcati has been taken on by some big names, too. Actors who have played her include Margaret Rutherford (in the original 1941 production), Beryl Reid, Dora Bryan, Penelope Keith, Alison Steadman, Hattie Jacques, Angela Lansbury and Jennifer Saunders. Twiggy also played Elvira in one production.

10. Blithe Spirit has been turned into a musical, High Spirits, and has been adapted for film twice, in 1945 and 2020. It has also been adapted for TV and radio.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

28 April: Poetry

Today is Great Poetry Reading Day, so here are 10 things you might not know about poetry.

1. The word "poetry" comes from the Greek term poiesis, which means "making”. “Poem” comes from the Greek poíēma, meaning a “thing made.” Incidentally, Prose comes from the Latin “prosa oratio,” meaning “straightforward.”

2. Metrophobia is the fear of poetry. Metromania is the compulsion to write poetry.

3. Some say poetry has been around for longer than the written word. Poems were used as a way to remember genealogy, laws, and oral history; they would also have been used in religious rituals or for casting spells.

4. The oldest surviving epic poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh which dates from the 3rd millennium BC in Sumer, now part of Iraq.

5. The longest poem in the world is the Mahabharata, an Indian epic poem dating from around the 4th century BC. It has about 1.8 million words.

6. The oldest surviving love poem is written by an unknown author on a clay tablet about 4,000 years ago. It was written for king Shu-Sin to recite to his bride during a virility ritual.

7. The poet considered to be the father of poetry is a bit more recent. It’s Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), also dubbed the father of English literature, and the first poet to be buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

8. The first poet laureate of England was Ben Johnson in 1616. However, it didn't become an official royal office until 1668 when John Dryden was appointed. A poet laureate’s job is writing poems for national occasions.

9. The seemingly modern words “unfriend” and “muggle” first appeared in a poem written in 1275. It was called Brut and the poet’s name was Layamon.

10. There has been a study which found that studying poetry can improve a person’s prose writing, because it means learning about rhythmic structure, vocabulary, formal words vs. colloquial words, visual imagery and sense of sound.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

14 April: Grapes of Wrath

On this date in 1939, John Steinbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath was published. 10 facts about it.

1. For those who haven’t read it, it is about the Joad family who live in Oklahoma during the great depression. They are tenant farmers beset by economic hardship caused by drought, industry changes and bank foreclosures who are forced to leave their farm to find work in California.

2. The road they take is described as “The Mother Road”, which is actually Route 66. Route 66 has been nicknamed The Mother Road ever since as a result.

3. Inspiration for the novel came when Steinbeck was working as a journalist and was commissioned to write some articles about migrant labour camps in California. He wrote about the appalling conditions he saw there in The Harvest Gypsies, a series of seven articles that ran in the San Francisco News in October 1936. He used much of what he wrote in The Grapes of Wrath.

4. He needed more than his own observations, though, and used some notes given to him by Tom Collins, manager of the Migratory Labour Camp in Kern County, California. What he didn’t know was that another writer, Sanora Babb, had written the reports as a basis for her own novel, called Whose Names Are Unknown. Her novel was eclipsed by the success of Steinbeck’s, so she didn’t publish it until 2004, a year before she died.

5. Steinbeck’s wife, Carol, typed the manuscript for him and also came up with the title. It comes from a line in The Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord/He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Julia Ward, who wrote the song, in turn got the phrase “grapes of wrath” from The Bible, Revelation 14:19 to be exact. Using a line from The Battle Hymn of the Republic, in Steinbeck’s mind, would label it as an American book and not Communist propaganda.

6. Nevertheless, the Associated Farmers of California denounced it as exactly that, furious at the novel’s suggestion that they used cheap labour. They called it a pack of lies and held book burnings. Things got so bad that the FBI put Steinbeck under surveillance, and his local sheriff advised him to carry a gun. However, the actual Communist Party didn’t like it either – it was banned in the Soviet Union, because it showed that even the most impoverished Americans could afford a car.

7. Despite all that, it was a runaway success and sold over 400,000 copies in its first year. The New York Times called it “a magnificent novel of America.” First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt loved it too, and wrote glowing reviews in her newspaper column, calling it “an unforgettable experience in reading.” It netted Steinbeck the 1940 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and was part of the reason he won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

8. Steinbeck kept a journal while he was writing the book, which tells us it wasn’t an easy process. He knew what he was writing was possibly destined for greatness but was plagued with self doubt. “This book has become a misery to me because of my inadequacy,” he wrote. He also wrote "It isn't the great book I had hoped it would be. It's just a run-of-the-mill book."

9. It was made into a film in 1940, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. Ford won an Oscar for Best Director and Jane Darwell won Best Supporting Actress as Ma Joad. The novel has also been an inspiration to songwriters. Woody Guthrie, Kris Kristofferson, Bruce Springsteen and Mumford & Sons are among the many artists who have used characters and scenes from the story in their songs.

10. There’s an urban myth that the Japanese translation is called The Angry Raisins. It wasn’t, but there’s possibly a grain of truth. Steinbeck’s widow once went into a book shop in Japan to ask if they had any of her late husband’s books. The owner allegedly thought for a moment, and then said yes, he had The Angry Raisins. So a mistranslation by that one individual became an urban myth.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

26 February: Cinderella

Today is Tell a Fairy Tale Day, so here are ten facts about the fairytale Cinderella.

1. The story of Cinderella is a rags to riches tale that originates in folklore. Variations of it appear in folklore from all over the world.

2. The earliest example is from Ancient Greece, which could date back to as early as 7BC. In this version the protagonist is called Rhodopis, which means "Rosy-Cheeks". She is a slave girl who ends up marrying the king of Egypt.

3. The story we are most familiar with comes from a retelling of an Italian version of the story, by the Brothers Grimm in their folk tale collection Grimms' Fairy Tales from 1812, and the 1950 Disney film which was an adaptation of that.

4. In the Brothers Grimm version, the protagonist is called "Aschenputtel" which means "The Little Ash Girl".

5. Cinderella doesn’t wear glass slippers in all versions. Some say it was a fur slipper and the Glass one came about as a mistranslation as the French words for fur and glass sound similar. In some versions, it’s not a Shoe at all, but an anklet, ring or bracelet. Whatever it may be, the point is that Cinderella is the only woman it will fit. In some versions, the ugly sisters actually mutilate their Feet in order to make the slipper fit. In the original Disney movie, the wicked stepmother smashes the glass slipper in a bid to ruin Cinderella’s chances of winning her prince. However, she hadn’t bargained for the fact that Cinderella still had the matching shoe.

6. In some versions, there isn’t even a ball. Instead, Cinderella goes to church. Nor is there always a midnight deadline, but she leaves the ball, or church, simply because she is tired and wants to go home.

7. There’s not always a fairy godmother, either. Sometimes the help comes from a wishing tree, or Cinderella’s mother who has been turned into a Cow, or been reincarnated as one.

8. Disney’s 1950 Cinderella may actually have saved Disney from going bust. The studio was in financial trouble back then, and took a gamble on this film. Luckily for them it paid off.

9. Cinderella’s voice in this film was provided by Ilene Woods, who beat 300 other hopefuls when Walt Disney fell in love with her voice.

10. Cinderella’s name has become an analogy for a person or a sports team that achieves recognition or success after being plucked out of obscurity.

For a short story called The Cinderella Syndrome:

Sweet Karma

More murder and mayhem along with moving statues, Ancient Egyptian magic pebbles, a World War II evacuee's diary and a bathtub full of marshmallows.

Paperback  Amazon

E-Book Amazon Kindle

3 January: An Ideal Husband

On this date in 1895 Oscar Wilde's Ideal Husband opened in London. 10 facts about the play:

1. One of the characters in the play is Lord Goring, who is named after Goring-by-Sea, the town Wilde was staying in when he wrote the first act.

2. The play was written as a commission for actor-manager John Hare. However, Hare didn’t like the play and rejected it.

3. So Wilde offered it instead to a rival theatre, the Haymarket, which did take it on.

4. It was billed as "A new and original play of modern life".

5. It ran at the Haymarket for 111 performances, regarded as a good run at the time. Audiences loved it, but critics weren’t so keen. HG Wells wrote: “It is not excellent; indeed, after Lady Windermere's Fan and The Woman of No Importance, it is decidedly disappointing.”

6. The plot concerns a politician with an untarnished reputation, and whose wife believes he is an ideal husband. However, he made a transgression early in his career that no-one knows about – he sold secrets about the Suez Canal. A woman called Mrs Cheveley shows up uninvited at a dinner party and threatens to spill the beans.

7. When the production transferred to the Criterion Theatre. Oscar Wilde’s name was removed from the programmes and posters, because, on its last day at the Haymarket, Wilde had been arrested for gross indecency. Unlike today when the play would be cancelled entirely, it went ahead without him.

8. The play was published in book form a few years later as "By the author of Lady Windermere's Fan".

9. The play has been made into a movie at least five times. Three of the adaptations were British, one German and one from the Soviet Union.

10. The BBC has broadcast seven Radio adaptations since in 1926.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/

21 August: Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

On this date in 1996 a replica of the Globe Theatre opened 300 yards from the original site. 10 things you might not know about Shakespeare’s Globe:

1. The theatre which opened in 1996 is the third Globe theatre. The first one was built in 1599 and burned down in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII. A theatrical cannon misfired and ignited the thatched roof. Thankfully, according to documentation at the time, no-one died and the only casualty was a man whose breeches caught Fire, but bystanders quickly dealt with the situation by throwing a bottle of ale over him to put out the flames.

2. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and stayed open until the London theatre closures of 1642.

3. Over 300 years later, the actor Sam Wanamaker began the project to recreate a theatre in almost the same spot. It’s approximately 750 feet (230 m) from the site of the original theatre. The original Globes were a street further back from the river.

4. Other than that, it’s a fairly accurate reconstruction, using the same types of building materials and methods the Elizabethans would have used. It is made of green Oak, and the timbers are fixed together using wooden pegs. The plaster on the walls contains Goat hair.

5. Shakespeare’s Globe has an illegal roof. After the Great fire of London, a law was passed banning thatched roofs in London. With the addition of a fire retardant lining, special permission was granted to allow it, so Shakespeare’s Globe is the only building in London to have a thatched roof in over 300 years.

6. The original Globe was owned by actors, specifically a group called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, of which Shakespeare was a member. The main shareholders were Richard Burbage and his brother Cuthbert. Shakespeare was one of four others who owned 12 and a half percent of the shares, although as as new shareholders were added, Shakespeare's share diminished to about 7% over the course of his career.

7. The company was originally based in Shoreditch where Richard and Cuthbert’s father had built a theatre on rented land. This was one of the earliest venues for Shakespeare’s plays. However, when Elizabeth I decided she didn’t like the troupe any more, the landlord cancelled the lease and destroyed the theatre. Legend has it that a bunch of the actors, quite likely including Shakespeare himself, returned while the landlord was away for Christmas, armed with daggers and cudgels and made off with the timber, which they used to build their new theatre in Southwark.

8. This story forms one of the theories as to why the theatre was called the Globe in the first place. It has been theorised that the name came from the Latin motto tag totus mundus agit histrionem ("all the world plays the player"), or quod fere totus mundus exerceat histrionem ("because all the world is a playground") from Petronius, which may have appeared on the theatre’s flag along with a picture of Hercules carrying the Earth on his shoulders, which could in turn have been a nod to the Herculean feat of Shakespeare and his pals carrying the building materials all the way from Shoreditch.

9. In Shakespeare’s time, most of the people who made up the audience (paying a penny for standing room only in front of the stage and known as “groundlings”) would not have been able to read, so a sign advertising the play’s title would not have been much use. Hence the theatre would fly flags to indicate what type of play the audience could expect to see. A Black flag indicated a tragedy, a White flag a comedy and a Red flag meant a history play.

10. Like the originals, the Globe is open to the elements, and really only a suitable venue for plays in the summer. Even in Shakespeare’s time, the company would move to an indoor venue in winter. Today, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse next door is used for the exact same purpose.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

30 July: Paperback books

Paperback Day marks the start of the paperback book revolution with publication of Penguin #1, in London in 1935. 10 facts about paperback books.

1. Paperback books are also known as soft covers or soft backs.

2. The covers are made from thicker paper and they are held together with glue, as opposed to hardbacks which have covers made from card covered with cloth, leather or Paper and with pages that are sewn or stapled together.

3. The paperback format has existed since the 19^th century and was used for pamphlets.

4. In the UK, the first paperback books for the mass market were produced by Allen Lane under the name of Penguin Books, in 1935. His initial run was ten reprints, and the first one on the list was Ariel, A Life of Shelley by Andre Maurois.

5. Book shops weren’t keen on stocking theses new fangled books at first. Woolworth’s was the first major retailer to see the potential and they placed a large order. When they sold well, other shops began selling them.

6. In the US, mass market paperbacks didn’t appear until 1939 when Robert de Graaf created the Pocket Books label, in partnership with Simon & Schuster.

7. From 1950, paperback originals began to appear. These were books that hadn’t been previously published as hardbacks but went straight to paperback. The first ones were published by Fawcett Publications.

8. The profit margin of a hardback is greater than that of a paperback, so the paperback version of a book is generally only released by publishers when interest in the hardback begins to die down. This is usually after about twelve months.

9. The most popular genre in paperback is romance. In 1982, 25% of paperback sales were romance novels, rising to 51% by 2013.

10. According to the Daily Express, the M6 toll road was built on two-and-a-half million copies of pulped Mills & Boon novels.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

10 April: The Great Gatsby

On this date in 1925 F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was published. 10 facts about the book:

1. It’s set in Long Island, New York, during the Jazz Age. It is told from the point of view of a narrator, Nick Carraway, a neighbour who rents a cottage in the area and describes his interactions with the mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby.

2. The Great Gatsby wasn’t the first choice of title. Several others were considered, including Ash-Heaps and Millionaires; Trimalchio; Trimalchio in West Egg; On the Road to West Egg; Under the Red, White, and Blue; Gold-Hatted Gatsby and The High-Bouncing Lover. Fitzgerald’s own favourite was Trimalchio in West Egg. Trimalchio was a character in a 1st-century work of fiction called Satyricon. His publishers vetoed this choice because they thought the average reader would not have heard of Trimalchio.

3. The cover design was commissioned by an unknown individual in the publisher’s art department while Fitzgerald was still working on the novel. The artist was called Francis Cugat, a little known painter from Barcelona. His design had a name: Celestial Eyes. Fitzgerald loved it. He liked it so much, in fact, that he re-wrote part of the novel in order to incorporate it.

4. When it first came out, The Great Gatsby wasn’t a huge success. Fitzgerald put this down to the lack of sympathetic female characters at a time when most of the novel reading audience was female. That, and the fact his favoured title wasn’t used.

5. So how did it become an American classic? It experienced a revival as part of a scheme to send books to soldiers serving in the second world war. The Council on Books in Wartime distributed 150,000 free copies to American soldiers serving overseas. Enough of them liked it to trigger a re-examination of the work by the critics.

6. Gatsby may well have been based on a first world war veteran called Max Gerlach, who Fitzgerald knew when he lived in Great Neck. One of Fitzgerald's scrapbooks contains a photo of the Fitzgeralds with a handwritten note which reads, “Here for a few days on business—How are you and the family old Sport? Gerlach.” “Old Sport,” is how Gatsby addresses the narrator, Nick Carraway.

7. The character of Daisy Buchanan was based on one of Fitzgerald’s ex-girlfriends, a woman called Ginevra King, who some scholars have said was the most important relationship he’d ever had, including the one with his wife. Her best friend, Jordan Baker, was based on one of Ginevra’s good friends, Edith Cummings, who was, like the character, a golfer, who won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1924 and was known as “The Fairway Flapper.” Her name is a conglomeration of two two popular car brands of the time, the Jordan Motor Car Company and the Baker Motor Vehicle. The names were chosen to suggest that Daisy’s friend had a “fast” reputation.

8. Inspiration for the Gatsby mansion is thought to have come from two real life stately homes: Oheka Castle, in Huntington, New York, which to this day remains the second largest private estate in the United States; and Beacon Towers, a mansion with more than 140 rooms owned by William Randolph Hearst, which was demolished in 1945.

9. The epigraph was written by a fictional poet. The poet was actually a character in one of Fitzgerald’s other books, This Side of Paradise.

10. There have been numerous adaptations for stage, screen, radio and TV, and even a video game. Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, was not a fan of the silent film released in 1926. She went to see it, and wrote in a letter that it was “ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left.”

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

19 October: Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre was first published on this date in 1847. Here are 10 facts about it:

1. The book was originally published in three volumes as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, with Currer Bell listed as the editor. Having only ever corresponded by letter, Brontë’s publisher Smith, Elder, and Company had no idea at first that Currer Bell was a woman.

2. It’s the first novel to focus on the moral and spiritual development of its protagonist through first-person narrative.

3. The second edition was dedicated to William Makepeace Thackeray.

4. There are several aspects of the novel thought to have been based on Charlotte’s own experiences. Jane’s school, Lowood, was based on the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, Lancashire, the school Charlotte and her sisters attended. Jane’s friend Jane Eyre's friend Helen Burns is based on Brontë’s sister, Maria, who was also neglected when she caught TB at school, and later died. The cruel headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst, was drawn from a real person, Reverend William Carus Wilson. When he read the book, Wilson recognised himself and threatened a lawsuit. Charlotte wrote him an apology, retracting most of the bad things she’d said about the school. She told Wilson he could publish it if he wanted. He didn’t sue, but never published the apology.

5. Thornfield Hall was probably inspired by North Lees Hall in the Peak District in Derbyshire. Charlotte Brontë and her friend Ellen Nussey visited it in the summer of 1845. Like Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë worked as a governess, to the Sidgwick family in 1830. She hated the job, and wrote of it: “I had charge given me of a set of pampered, spoilt, turbulent children, whom I was expected constantly to amuse, as well as to instruct.”

6. Rochester’s blindness was probably influenced by real life as well. Her father had an operation to have cataracts removed from his eyes while Charlotte was writing the novel. He was blind for a while and eventually regained his sight, just like Rochester.

7. While Charlotte had no direct encounter with a mad woman in an attic, she was again inspired by real life when creating Bertha Mason. She visited Norton Conyers House in North Yorkshire, where she learned that 60 years before, a mentally ill woman had been confined in “Mad Mary’s Room” in the attic. It was probably true as in 2004, the owners of the house found a blocked staircase connecting the attic and the first floor, like the one described in the novel.

8. As a child, Brontë made tiny books with her brother Branwell they called The History of the Young Men. One of the characters Charlotte created, one Alfred the Duke of Zamorna, is thought to have been a precedent for Rochester.

9. Reviews at the time were mixed. One reviewer wrote, "There is not a single natural character throughout the work. Everybody moves on stilts—the opinions are bad—the notions absurd.” Others, however, were more complementary: "It is full of youthful vigour, of freshness and originality, of nervous diction and concentrated interest ...It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears." Today, Jane Eyre is considered one of the greatest novels in the English language. In 2003 it was ranked as the tenth best-loved book in Britain by the BBC in The Big Read poll.

10. The novel has been adapted into a number of other forms, including theatre, film, television, and at least three full-length operas.

NEW!!

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

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30 August: Anna Karenina

On this date in 1935, a film adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina premièred in the US. 10 things you might not know about Anna Karenina:

1. It was first published as a serial in a publication called The Russian Messenger in 1877. However, fans at the time would have been mightily frustrated since the last instalment didn’t appear in the periodical. This was because Tolstoy expressed criticism of the Turkish-Serbian-Russian war in it. The editor though this was unpatriotic and refused to publish it unless Tolstoy changed it, which he refused to do.

2. The story is about an extramarital affair between Anna and cavalry officer Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, a scandal in the social circles of St Petersburg. Its themes are betrayal, faith, family, marriage, Imperial Russian society, desire, and the differences between rural and urban life.

3. Trains are a motif throughout the novel with many significant plot points happening on trains or at railway stations.

4. Anna is based on a number of women Tolstoy knew personally, perhaps most significantly Anna Stepanovna Pirogova, the mistress of one of his friends. When she thought her lover was being unfaithful, she ran away and wandered in the countryside for several days, and ultimately threw herself under a train. Tolstoy was present at her autopsy. Another influence was Maria Hartung who charmed Tolstoy when they met at a ball.

5. Tolstoy was also inspired by one of Alexandr Pushkin’s short stories. He was impressed by the way Pushkin launched into the action of the story rather than beginning with detailed descriptions as was the usual style of the time. Tolstoy said, "That's the way for us to write! Anyone else would start by describing the guests, the rooms, but he jumped straight into the action." He started writing Anna Karenina that same day.

6. The character Levin is thought by many to be based on Tolstoy himself, as he shares the same beliefs and struggles. Tolstoy's wife even said to him, "Levin is you, without the talent."

7. The novel begins with the words: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Its epigraph is "Vengeance is mine; I will repay", a quote from The Bible.

8. Tolstoy called Anna Karenina his first true novel, even though it wasn’t the first one he wrote. Even so, his diaries reveal that, like many writers, the writing process didn’t go smoothly and was a source of frustration to him. He wrote: "I loathe what I have written. The galleys of Anna Karenina for the April issue of Russkij Vestnik now lie on my table, and I really don't have the heart to correct them. Everything in them is so rotten, and the whole thing should be rewritten—all that has been printed too—scrapped, and melted down, thrown away, renounced.”

9. In 2007, a poll of contemporary authors placed Anna Karenina at the top of the list of the greatest books of all time.

10. Actresses who have played Anna on stage. Screen and radio include Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh, Jacqueline Bisset and Keira Knightley.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

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