By J. A. Young

From the first epic to modern-day classics, the literary landscape is filled with authors and works that have inspired people throughout time. The following offerings are facts and trivia about writers and literature.

The Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh (the world’s first epic) was recorded in 1200 B.C.

Sophocles, the Greek Playwright, of Oedipus Rex fame is believed to have been born in the year 496 B.C.

The Roman poet Ovid wrote Ars Amatoria in c. 2 B.C.

Chinese poet Li Po was born in the year 701.

The first German ballad is called “Ludwigslied” and dates from 881.

“Beowulf” was written in Old English around the year 1000.

Dating from c. 1140, The Song of Roland or La Chanson de Roland, is the oldest literary work of the French.

Dante, of Divine Comedy fame, was exiled from Florence in 1302.

The year 1304 saw the birth of the Italian poet Petrarch.

The tales of Robin Hood began to appear in English literature around the year 1375.

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales were printed in 1477.

English poet Sir Thomas Wyatt also served as an ambassador for King Henry VIII.

The first roofed Parisian theatre dates from 1548 and was named Hotel de Bourgogne.

William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were both born in the year 1564.

English poet John Donne was the grandson of English playwright John Heywood.

John Milton was born in Cheapside, London, England in 1608.

French writer Moliere was the son of an interior decorator. Moliere was born in 1622.

William Blake, born in 1757, was educated by his mother at home. His father was a hosier.

Born in 1771, Sir Walter Scott suffered from polio as a young child that left him partially lame for the rest of his life.

Charles Dickens began working at the age of twelve in a boot blacking factory.

Born in 1804, George Sand was a distant relative of French king Louis XVI.

1805 witnessed the birth of Hans Christian Andersen in Odense, Denmark. One of his most famous tales is “The Little Mermaid.”

In 1806, Napoleon’s Army invaded Weimar and actually occupied Goethe’s house where he was living with his mistress and their son.

Considered the father of modern Russian literature, Aleksandr Pushkin was killed in a duel with his wife’s lover in 1837.

Like his mother and brother, English poet John Keats died from tuberculosis.

The son of a surgeon, Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854.

American author Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. He was the son of an astrology “professor.”

Herman Melville dedicated his novel Moby Dick to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter.

Evelyn Waugh, Nathanael West and George Orwell were each born in 1903.

Born in Calcutta, India, Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Although he lived most of his life in England, the poet T.S. Eliot was actually born in St. Louis, Missouri.

Robert Frost’s Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1931.

In 1959, the U.S. postmaster banned Lady Chatterley’s Lover from the U.S. mail for reasons of obscenity.

Many sources consider Agatha Christie (author of sixty-six mysteries) the bestselling author of all time.

Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood wrote Surfacing in 1972.

Contemporary mystery writer Anne Perry is also a convicted murderer from a notorious crime committed in 1954 in a New Zealand park when she was a teenager.

1988 saw Toni Morrison win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Beloved.