Interesting facts about writers. Interesting facts about writers

Today I will tell you 20 facts about writers and poets that you did not know. Or maybe they knew, of course. The fact that all this is true, I can not guarantee you, and no one can. It is your choice to believe or not.

20 facts about writers and poets that you did not know

Fact #1.Alexander Pushkin was blond!

True, only up to 19 years. In memories little Pushkin called "frisky blond boy", in childhood he was blond. Pushkin lost his blond curls due to illness. At the age of 19 he was struck by a fever, the poet was shaved bald. For a long time Alexander Sergeevich wore a red yarmulke, and then dark blond hair replaced the cap. And he began to look like we are used to.

Fact #2. Alexandre Dumas is Pushkin

There is a version according to which our beloved Pushkin did not die at all, but staged his death and left for France, since he was fluent in French. The evidence is plentiful. One of them - they say, until Pushkin died, Dumas could not write anything, and after 1837, one after another, he began to write brilliant novels. The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years Later, Queen Margo...

Fact #3. Conan Doyle believed in winged fairies

Yes, yes, the man who invented Sherlock Holmes believed in the existence of fairies. He wrote the book "The Coming of the Fairies", in which he published photographs of winged fairies and examinations proving the authenticity of the pictures. The writer, who believed in the existence of a small people, spent more than a million dollars on these studies.

Fact number 4. Chekhov's pet was a mongoose

The writer brought an outlandish animal from a trip to the island of Ceylon. Chekhov himself called the mongoose "a cute and independent little animal," and his family called him "Bastard." By the way, then Chekhov exchanged the Bastard for a free ticket to the Moscow Zoo.

Fact number 5.Nikolai Gogol invented the first attraction

Writer remade windmill into a Ferris wheel and rolled peasant children on it. But the trouble is - Gogol did not think about reliable insurance. Then everything is like in a book: “The auditor is coming to us!”. In general, the amusement park covered it.

Fact number 6. St. Petersburg journalist received fees for "The Master and Margarita"

Dying, Bulgakov bequeathed to give part of the royalties for the book to someone who, after the publication of The Master and Margarita, would bring flowers to the grave of the writer, and not sometime, but on the day when he burned the first version of the manuscript of the novel. That person was Vladimir Nevelsky, a journalist from Leningrad. It was to him that Bulgakov's wife gave a check for a decent amount of royalties.

Fact number 7.Lewis Carroll invented the tricycle

The author of Alice in Wonderland was a mathematician, a poet and a great inventor. He invented a tricycle, a mnemonic system for remembering names and dates, an electric pen (by the way, what is it ?!), a dust jacket, a prototype of everyone's favorite Scrabble game, which in Russian is called Scrabble.

Fact number 8.Edgar Allan Poe studied at the cemetery

And, by the way, terribly afraid of the dark. The school where little Edgar studied was very poor, and the children had no textbooks. A resourceful math teacher took schoolchildren to the cemetery, where they counted the graves and calculated the years of the life of the dead.

Fact #9. Hans Andersen had Pushkin's autograph

The Danish storyteller received it from the wife of the owner of the Kapnistovaya Notebook, in which Pushkin copied the verses he had selected with his own hand. The wife tore out one sheet from the notebook and sent it to Andersen, who was immensely happy. By the way, now this sheet is kept in the Copenhagen Royal Library.

Fact number 10. Nikolai Gogol knitted perfectly

Gogol had a passion for cooking and needlework. He treated his friends to personally prepared dumplings and dumplings, knitted on knitting needles and sewed neckerchiefs for himself. But he flatly refused to be photographed - either he covered his face with a top hat, or he grimaced in every possible way. Therefore, he was rarely invited to social events.

Fact number 11. The army of Chekhov's fans was nicknamed "Antonovka"

When Anton Chekhov moved to Yalta, his enthusiastic fans also moved to the Crimea. They ran after him all over the city, studied his walk and suit, tried to attract attention. In January 1902, the News of the Day newspaper wrote: “In Yalta, a whole army of stupid and unbearably ardent admirers of his artistic talent, called here “Antonovka”, was formed.

Fact number 12.Mark Twain invented suspenders

He was an inventor no worse than Carroll. He has patents for self-adjusting braces and a scrapbook with adhesive pages. Also, Mark Twain invented a notebook with loose leaves, a wardrobe with sliding shelves, but his most ingenious invention is a tie-tying machine. It doesn't seem to have spread...

Fact number 13.Lewis Carroll - Jack the Ripper

Journalist Richard Wallis, author of Jack the Ripper, Windy Friend, claims that the Jack the Ripper who brutally murdered London prostitutes is Lewis Carroll. And Carroll himself in his diaries constantly repented of some kind of sin. But no one knew which one, because Carroll's relatives destroyed all his diaries. Away from sin.

Fact #14. Boxing gloves helped Vladimir Nabokov emigrate

Nabokov became interested in boxing while still in the army. When he emigrated to America in 1940, at the border, three customs officers began to meticulously examine his luggage. But when they saw boxing gloves in the suitcase, they immediately put them on and started boxing with each other as a joke. In general, America and Nabokov liked each other.

Fact #15. Jack London is a millionaire

Jack London became the first American writer to earn a million dollars from his work. London lived only 41 years, but he began to work at the age of 9 - he sold newspapers. Becoming a writer, London worked 15-17 hours a day and wrote about 40 books in his short life.

Fact #16. John Tolkien snored terribly

His snoring was so loud that he slept in the bathroom so as not to disturb his wife's sleep. And the author of the trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" bequeathed never, never to make films based on his books. But, apparently, the thirst for money took up the wills of a brilliant father, and Tolkien's children agreed to the film adaptation. Well, what came of it, we all know.

Fact number 17. Vladimir Mayakovsky - Shchen

Mayakovsky terribly loved various “cats and dogs,” as he called them. Once, while walking with Lilya Brik, they picked up a homeless red puppy. They took him home and named him Shchen. Later, Lily began to call Mayakovsky Puppy. And he has since signed “Puppy” in letters and telegrams and always added a puppy at the bottom.

Fact #18 Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee a day

And he wrote only at night. He sat down to work at midnight, dressed in a white coat, he wrote for 15 hours in a row, drinking only at night up to 20 cups of strong Turkish coffee or simply chewing coffee beans. So at night he wrote his 100 novels of the literary epic "The Human Comedy".

Fact No. 19. Alexandre Dumas opened the first kebab house in France

Yes, it was he who introduced France to barbecue. For the first time, Dumas tried barbecue while traveling in the Caucasus. He liked the dish so much that he included it in his Great Cookbook. Yes, Dumas had one. Rumor has it that the writer cooked barbecue for the French even from crows. They praised.

Well, if you believe the fact number 2, then it was Alexander Pushkin who was such an ardent lover fried meat on skewers...

Fact #20. Dickens only slept with his head to the north

And he sat down to write, too, only when his face was turned to the north. And he could not work at all if the chair and table in the office were not the way he wanted. Therefore, before starting to write, he always rearranged the furniture.

Illustrations by Katerina Karpenko

(except for the illustration to the fact about Vladimir Mayakovsky)

There are many curious facts connected with Russian poets and writers that shed light on this or that event. It seems to us that we know everything, or almost everything, about the life of great writers, but there are unexplored pages!

So, for example, we learned that Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was the initiator of the fatal duel and did everything possible to make it happen - it was a matter of honor for the poet ... And Leo Tolstoy, because of his addiction to gambling lost his house. And we also know how the great Anton Pavlovich loved to call his wife in correspondence - “the crocodile of my soul” ... Read about these and other facts of Russian geniuses in our selection of “the most interesting facts from the life of Russian poets and writers”.

Russian writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer ( Lomonosov), industry ( Karamzin), dizziness ( Saltykov-Shchedrin), fade away ( Dostoevsky), mediocrity ( Northerner), exhausted ( Khlebnikov).

Pushkin was not handsome, unlike his wife Natalya Goncharova, who, in addition to everything, was 10 cm taller than her husband. For this reason, when attending balls, Pushkin tried to stay away from his wife, so as not to once again focus the attention of others on this contrast.

During the period of courtship for his future wife Natalya, Pushkin told his friends a lot about her and at the same time usually said: “I am delighted, I am fascinated, In short, I am disappointed!”

Korney Chukovsky- it is a nickname. The real name (according to available documents) of the most published in Russia children's writer- Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneichukov. He was born in 1882 in Odessa out of wedlock, was recorded under his mother's surname, and published his first article in 1901 under the pseudonym Korney Chukovsky.

Lev Tolstoy. In youth future genius Russian literature was quite reckless. Once upon a time card game with his neighbor, the landowner Gorokhov, Leo Tolstoy lost the main building of the hereditary estate - the estate Yasnaya Polyana. A neighbor dismantled the house and took it to him for 35 miles as a trophy. It is worth noting that it was not just a building - it was here that the writer was born and spent his childhood, it was this house that he warmly remembered all his life and even wanted to buy it back, but for one reason or another did not do it.

famous Soviet writer and public figure burr, that is, did not pronounce the letters "r" and "l". It happened in childhood, when, while playing, he accidentally cut his tongue with a razor, and it became difficult for him to pronounce his name: Cyril. In 1934 he took the pseudonym Konstantin.

Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov were natives of Odessa, but met only in Moscow immediately before starting work on their first novel. Subsequently, the duet worked together so well that even the daughter of Ilf Alexander, who is engaged in popularizing the heritage of writers, called herself the daughter of "Ilf and Petrov."

Alexander Solzhenitsyn I spoke with Russian President Boris Yeltsin more than once. So, for example, Yeltsin asked his opinion about the Kuril Islands (Solzhenitsyn advised to give them to Japan). And in the mid-1990s, after the return of Alexander Isaevich from emigration and the restoration of Russian citizenship, by order of Yeltsin, he was presented with the Sosnovka-2 state dacha in the Moscow region.

Chekhov sat down to write, dressed in full dress. Kuprin On the contrary, he loved to work completely naked.

When a Russian satirist writer Arkady Averchenko during the First World War brought to one of the editors a story on military theme, the censor deleted from it the phrase: "The sky was blue." It turns out that according to these words, enemy spies could have guessed that the matter took place in the south.

Real surname satirist Grigory Gorin was Offstein. When asked about the reason for choosing a pseudonym, Gorin replied that it was an abbreviation: "Grisha Ofshtein decided to change his nationality."

Initially at the grave Gogol in the monastery cemetery lay a stone, nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its similarity with Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, when reburial in another place, they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And the same stone was subsequently placed on the grave of Bulgakov by his wife. In this regard, the phrase Bulgakov, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”

After the outbreak of World War II Marina Tsvetaeva sent for evacuation to the city of Yelabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring her of its strength, he joked: "The rope will withstand everything, even hang yourself." Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga.

famous phrase "We all came from Gogol's overcoat», which is used to express humanistic traditions Russian literature. Often the authorship of this expression is attributed to Dostoevsky, but in fact the first person who said it was a French critic. Eugene Vogüet, who discussed the origins of Dostoevsky's work. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself quoted this quote in a conversation with another French writer, who understood it as own words writer and published them in this light in his work.

As a remedy for big belly» A.P. Chekhov prescribed a milk diet to his obese patients. During the week, the unfortunate had to eat nothing, and extinguish hunger attacks with hundred-gram doses of ordinary milk. Indeed, due to the fact that milk is quickly and well absorbed, a glass of drink taken in the morning reduces appetite. So, without feeling hungry, you can hold out until lunch. This property of milk was used by Anton Pavlovich in his medical practice ...

Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, the description of the courtyard in which Raskolnikov hides things stolen by him from the pawnbroker's apartment, he composed from personal experience- when one day, walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard in order to relieve himself.

Do you know what Pushkin received as a dowry for N.N. Goncharova bronze statue? Not the most comfortable dowry! But still in mid-eighteenth century Afanasy Abramovich Goncharov was one of the the richest people Russia. The sailing fabric produced at his Linen Factory was purchased for the British Navy, and the paper was considered the best in Russia. In the Linen factory for feasts, hunting, performances gathered better society, and in 1775 Catherine herself visited here.

In memory of this event, the Goncharovs bought bronze statue Empress, cast in Berlin. The order was already brought under Paul, when it was dangerous to honor Catherine. And then there was no longer enough money to erect a monument - Afanasy Nikolaevich Goncharov, Natalia Nikolaevna's grandfather, who inherited a huge fortune, left debts and a disordered economy to his grandchildren. He came up with the idea of ​​giving his granddaughter a statue as a dowry.

The ordeal of the poet with this statue is reflected in his letters. Pushkin calls her "copper grandmother" and tries to sell it to the State Mint for remelting (scrap of non-ferrous metals!). In the end, the statue was sold to the foundry of Franz Bard, apparently after the death of the poet.

The bard sold the long-suffering statue to the Yekaterinoslav nobility, which erected a monument to the founder of their city on the Cathedral Square of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk). But even after finally getting to the city of her name, the “copper grandmother” continued to travel, changing 3 pedestals, and after the fascist occupation she completely disappeared. Has the “grandmother” found peace, or does she continue her movements around the world?

Main plot immortal work N. V. Gogol's "Inspector" was suggested to the author by A. S. Pushkin. These great classics were good friends. Once Alexander Sergeevich told Nikolai Vasilyevich an interesting fact from the life of the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province. It was this case that formed the basis of the work of Nikolai Gogol.

Throughout the writing of The Inspector General, Gogol often wrote to Pushkin about his work, told him what stage it was in, and also repeatedly reported that he wanted to quit it. However, Pushkin forbade him to do this, so the "Inspector General" was still completed.

By the way, Pushkin, who was present at the first reading of the play, was completely delighted with it.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in correspondence with his wife Olga Leonardovna, Knipper used to her, in addition to standard compliments and affectionate words, very unusual ones: “actress”, “dog”, “snake” and - feel the lyricism of the moment - “the crocodile of my soul”.

Alexander Griboyedov He was not only a poet, but also a diplomat. In 1829 he died in Persia along with the rest of diplomatic mission at the hands of religious fanatics. To atone for guilt, the Persian delegation arrived in St. Petersburg with rich gifts, among which was the famous Shah diamond weighing 88.7 carats. Another purpose of the embassy's visit was to mitigate the indemnity imposed on Persia under the terms of the Turkmanchay peace treaty. Emperor Nicholas I went to meet the Persians and said: "I consign the ill-fated Tehran incident to eternal oblivion!"

Lev Tolstoy was skeptical about his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, he sent Fet a letter: "How happy I am ... that I will never write verbose rubbish like War." An entry in his diary in 1908 reads: "People love me for those trifles - War and Peace, etc., which seem very important to them."

The duel in which Pushkin was mortally wounded was not initiated by the poet. Pushkin sent a challenge to Dantes in November 1836, the impetus for which was the spread of anonymous lampoons that made him look like a cuckold. However, that duel was canceled thanks to the efforts of the poet's friends and the proposal made by Dantes to the sister of Natalia Goncharova. But the conflict was not settled, the spread of jokes about Pushkin and his family continued, and then the poet sent an extremely insulting letter to Dantes' adoptive father Gekkern in February 1837, knowing that this would entail a challenge already from Dantes. And so it happened, and this duel was the last for Pushkin. By the way, Dantes was a relative of Pushkin. At the time of the duel, he was married to the sister of Pushkin's wife, Ekaterina Goncharova.

sick, Chekhov sent a messenger to the pharmacy for castor oil in capsules. The pharmacist sent him two large capsules, which Chekhov returned with the inscription "I'm not a horse!". Having received the writer's autograph, the pharmacist happily replaced them with normal capsules.

Passion Ivan Krylov there was food. Before dinner at a party, Krylov read two or three fables. After the praise, he waited for dinner. With the ease of a youth, despite all his obesity, he went to the dining room as soon as it was announced: "Dinner is served." The Kirghiz lackey Yemelyan tied a napkin under Krylov's chin, spread the second on his knees and stood behind the chair.

Krylov ate a huge plate of pies, three plates of fish soup, huge veal chops - a couple of plates, roast turkey, which he called the "Firebird", besides urinating: Nezhin cucumbers, lingonberries, cloudberries, plums, jamming Antonov apples like plums, finally set to Strasbourg pâté, freshly prepared from the freshest butter, truffles and goose livers. After eating several plates, Krylov leaned on kvass, after which he washed down his food with two glasses of coffee with cream, in which you stick a spoon - it costs.

The writer V.V. Veresaev recalled that all the pleasure, all the bliss of life for Krylov consisted in food. At one time, he received invitations to small dinners with the Empress, about which he later spoke very unflatteringly because of the portioned paucity of the dishes served at the table. At one of these dinners, Krylov sat down at the table and, without greeting the hostess, began to eat. The poet who was present Zhukovsky he exclaimed in surprise: “Stop, let the queen at least treat you.” “What if he doesn’t treat him?” Krylov answered, without looking up from his plate. At dinner parties, he usually ate a dish of pies, three or four plates of fish soup, a few chops, a roast turkey, and a few "little things." Arriving home, I ate it all with a bowl sauerkraut and black bread.

By the way, everyone believed that the fabulist Krylov died of intestinal volvulus due to overeating. In fact, he died from bilateral pneumonia.

Gogol had a passion for needlework. He knitted scarves on knitting needles, cut dresses for his sisters, wove belts, sewed neckerchiefs for the summer.

Did you know that the typical Russian name Svetlana is only 200 years old with a small tail? Before A.Kh. Vostokov, such a name did not exist. It first appeared in his romance Svetlana and Mstislav. Then it was fashionable to call literary heroes pseudo-Russian names. This is how Dobrada, Priyata, Miloslav appeared - purely literary, not spelled out in the holy calendar. That's why they didn't call the kids that.

Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky took from Vostokov's romance the name for the heroine of his ballad. "Svetlana" has become very popular piece. In the 60s, 70s years XIX century "Svetlana" stepped into the people from the pages of books. But there was no such name in the church books! Therefore, they baptized girls like Photinia, Faina, or Lukerya, from Greek and Latin words, meaning light. Interestingly, this name is very common in other languages: Italian Chiara, German and French Clara and Claire, Italian Lucia, Celtic Fiona, Tajik Ravshana, ancient Greek Faina - all mean: light, bright. Poets just filled a linguistic niche!

After October revolution a wave of new names swept over Russia. Svetlana was perceived as a patriotic, modern and understandable name. Even Stalin called his daughter that. And in 1943, this name finally got into the calendar.

Another interesting fact: this name had and male form- Svetlana and Svet. Demyan Bedny named his son Light.

How many monuments in the world Russian poet Alexander Pushkin? The answer to this question is contained in the book of the Voronezh postcard collector Valery Kononov. All over the world their 270 . Not a single figure of literature was honored with such a number of monuments. The book contains illustrations best monuments poet. Among them are monuments of the era tsarist Russia and Soviet times, monuments installed abroad. Pushkin himself has never been abroad, but there are monuments to him in Cuba, India, Finland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Spain, China, Chile and Norway. Two monuments each - in Hungary, Germany (in Weimar and Düsseldorf). In the USA, one was delivered in 1941 in Jackson, New Jersey, the other in 1970 in Monroe, New York. V. Kononov deduced one regularity: monuments to Pushkin are usually erected not in large squares, but in parks and squares.

I.A. Krylov in everyday life was very untidy. His disheveled, unkempt hair, soiled, wrinkled shirts and other signs of slovenliness caused ridicule from acquaintances. Once the fabulist was invited to a masquerade. - How should I dress to remain unrecognized? he asked a familiar lady. - And you wash yourself, comb your hair - no one will recognize you, - she answered.

Seven years before death Gogol warned in his will: “I bequeath my body not to be buried until they appear clear signs decomposition." The writer was not listened to, and when the remains were reburied in 1931, a skeleton with a skull turned to one side was found in the coffin. According to other data, the skull was absent altogether.

The duels were quite diverse both in terms of weapons and form. So, for example, few people know that there was such an interesting form as the “quadruple duel”. In this kind of duel, after the opponents, their seconds shot.

By the way, the most famous quadruple duel was due to the ballerina Avdotya Istomina: the opponents Zavadovsky and Sheremetev were supposed to shoot first, and the seconds Griboyedov and Yakubovich - the second. At that time, Yakubovich shot Griboyedov in the palm of his left hand. It was by this wound that it was later possible to identify the corpse of Griboedov, who was killed by religious fanatics during the destruction of the Russian embassy in Tehran.

An example of the wit of a fabulist Krylova serves famous case V summer garden where he liked to walk. Once he met there with a group of young people. One of this company decided to play a joke on the physique of the writer: “Look, what a cloud is coming!”. Krylov heard, but was not embarrassed. He looked at the sky and added sarcastically: “It really is going to rain. That's what the frogs croaked.

Nikolai Karamzin owns the most a brief description of public life in Russia. When, during his trip to Europe, Russian emigrants asked Karamzin what was happening in his homeland, the writer answered with one word: “they steal.”

At Leo Tolstoy It was terrible handwriting. Only his wife could understand everything that was written, who, according to literary researchers, rewrote his “War and Peace” several times. Perhaps Lev Nikolaevich just wrote so quickly? The hypothesis is quite real, given the volume of his works.

Manuscripts Alexandra Pushkin always looked very nice. So beautiful that it's almost impossible to read the text. Vladimir Nabokov also had terrible handwriting, whose sketches and famous cards could only be read by his wife.

The most legible handwriting was with Sergei Yesenin, for which his publishers thanked him more than once.

The source of the expression "And a no brainer" - a poem Mayakovsky(“It’s clear even a hedgehog - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It became widespread first in the Strugatsky story "The Land of Crimson Clouds", and then in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (grades A, B, C, D, E) or one year (grades E, F, I). The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, two-year students were already ahead of them in a non-standard program, so at the beginning school year the expression "no brainer" was very relevant.

Agnia Barto's determination. She was always decisive: she saw the goal - and forward, without swaying and retreating. This feature of her showed through everywhere, in every little thing. Once in a torn civil war Spain, where Barto went to the International Congress for the Defense of Culture in 1937, where she saw with her own eyes what fascism was (congress meetings were held in a besieged burning Madrid), and just before the bombing she went to buy castanets. The sky howls, the walls of the store bounce, and the writer makes a purchase! But after all, the castanets are real, Spanish - for Agnia, who danced beautifully, it was an important souvenir. Alexei Tolstoy then sarcastically asked Barto: did she not buy a fan in that shop in order to fan herself during the next raids? ..

Once Fyodor Chaliapin introduced his friend to the guests - Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin."Meet my friends Aleksander Kuprin - the most sensitive nose of Russia." Contemporaries even joked that there was something "from a big beast" in Kuprin. For example, many ladies were very offended by the writer when he really sniffed them like a dog.

And once, a certain French perfumer, having heard from Kuprin a clear layout of the components of his new fragrance, exclaimed: “Such a rare gift and you are just a writer!” Kuprin often admired his colleagues in the workshop incredibly precise definitions. For example, in a dispute with Bunin and Chekhov, he won with one phrase: “Young girls smell like watermelon and fresh milk. And the old women, here in the south, - bitter wormwood, chamomile, dry cornflowers and - incense.

Anna Akhmatova She wrote her first poem at the age of 11. After rereading it “with a fresh mind”, the girl realized that she needed to improve her art of versification. Which is what she has become actively involved in.

However, Anna's father did not appreciate her efforts and considered it a waste of time. That is why he forbade the use of his real name - Gorenko. Anna decided to choose her great-grandmother's maiden name, Akhmatova, as a pseudonym.

Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov),

industry (Karamzin),

bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin),

fade away (Dostoevsky),

mediocrity (Severyanin),

exhausted (Khlebnikov).

Pushkin has more than 70 epigraphs, Gogol has at least 20,

almost the same for Turgenev.

Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneichukov.

Voltaire ridiculed Duke Rohan for his arrogance.

The duke ordered his servants to beat Voltaire, which was done. Voltaire challenged the duke to a duel, but the duke refused, as Voltaire was not a nobleman.

Starting to work on a new work, Balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and tightly closed the shutters so that light would not penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a bathrobe, for 18 hours a day.

Mark Twain was born in 1835 when Halley's comet flew close to Earth. He predicted that he would die during her next appearance. And so it happened in 1910.

Alexandre Dumas once participated in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: "I shot, but missed."

Writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head to the north. He also sat facing north when writing his great works.

French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who annoyed the Eiffel Tower. However, he dined every day at her restaurant, explaining this by the fact that there the only place in Paris, where you can't see the tower.

Beaumarchais, after presenting his play The Marriage of Figaro, was arrested and imprisoned. Louis XVI, playing cards, wrote an arrest warrant on the seven of spades.

Jules Verne spent many hours a day studying scientific literature, writing out the facts of interest to him on special cards. The scientific community could envy the card index compiled by him: there were more than 20 thousand cards in it.

Hans Christian Andersen was angry when he was called a children's storyteller and said that he wrote fairy tales for both adults and adults. For the same reason, he ordered that there should not be a single child on his monument, where the storyteller was originally supposed to be surrounded by children.

In 1925 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called this event "a token of gratitude for the relief he brought to the world by not publishing anything this year."

The American writer Emily Dickenson (1830-1886) wrote over 900 poems in her lifetime, only four of which were published during her lifetime.

Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that his real name is Kramer (Remarque is the other way around). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews.

LN Tolstoy was anathematized. Once a year, anathema was solemnly proclaimed in all churches to three persons: Mazepa, Grishka Otrepyev and Tolstoy.

The Belarusian poet Adam Mitskevich was also a science fiction writer. In Future Story, he wrote about acoustic devices that can be used to listen to concerts from the city while sitting by the fireplace, as well as mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets.

Jules Verne never visited Russia, but, nevertheless, in Russia (in whole or in part) the action of 9 of his novels unfolds.

American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and lack of any punctuation. In response to reader outrage, in the second edition of the book, he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking.

Lord Byron had four domestic geese that followed him everywhere, even at social gatherings. Despite his overweight and rather strong clubfoot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of his time.

Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called "literary blacks." Among them, the most famous is Auguste Maquet, who invented the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made a significant contribution to The Three Musketeers.

The author of "Robinson Crusoe" Daniel Defoe for a satirical article was (in 1703) sentenced to imprisonment. He spent days tied to pillory on the square. Passers-by were obliged to spit on him. Defoe was then forty-two.

Creator famous novel"The Gadfly" Ethel Lilian Voynich was a composer and considered her musical works even more significant than literary ones.

The famous Soviet writer and public figure Konstantin Simonov burred, that is, he did not pronounce the letters "r" and "l". It happened in childhood, when, while playing, he accidentally cut his tongue with a razor, and it became difficult for him to pronounce his name: Cyril. In 1934 he took the pseudonym Konstantin.

Expression " balzac age” arose after the release of Balzac’s novel “The Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is permissible in relation to women not older than 40 years.

Ilf and Petrov are very original way avoided thought-stamps - they discarded ideas that came to mind at once to both.

One of the most prolific writers of all time was the Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to The Dog in the Manger, he wrote another thousand eight hundred plays, all of them in verse.

He did not work on any play for more than three days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers.

The famous fabulist Aesop was so poor that he sold himself into slavery to pay off his debts. At that moment he was thirty years old.

Robinson Crusoe has a sequel. In it, Robinson again suffers a shipwreck and is forced to travel to Europe through all of Russia. For eight months he waits out the winter in Tobolsk. The novel has not been published in Russia since 1935.

From American writers Most of all, the works of Edgar Allan Poe were filmed - 114 times.

Once, at an official reception, Khrushchev called the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn Ivan Denisovich.

Chekhov sat down to write, dressed in full dress.

Kuprin, on the contrary, loved to work completely naked.

The Spanish playwright Antonio Silva was burned at the stake on October 19, 1739. On the same day, his play "The Death of Phaeton" was shown in the theater.

Writer Ernest Vincent Wright has a novel called Gadsby with over 50,000 words. There is not a single letter E (the most common letter in the English language) in the entire novel.

Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of short stories "Absolute Void". All stories are united by the fact that they are reviews of non-existent books written by fictitious authors.

Brian Aldiss, an acquaintance of Agatha Christie, once spoke about her methods - “she would finish the book to the last chapter, then choose the most unlikely of the suspects and, returning to the beginning, rework some points to frame him.”

Lewis Carroll liked to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called adult ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman in private, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent.

When the writer Arkady Averchenko during the First World War brought a story on a military theme to one of the editorial offices, the censor deleted the phrase from it: "The sky was blue." It turns out that according to these words, enemy spies could have guessed that the matter took place in the south.

The real name of the satirist writer Grigory Gorin was Offshtein. When asked about the reason for choosing a pseudonym, Gorin replied that it was an abbreviation: "Grisha Ofshtein decided to change his nationality."

If you're a reader of Stephen King's novels, you'll notice that most of his stories take place in Maine. Paradoxically, this state has the lowest crime rate in the United States.

James Barry created the image of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author's elder brother, who died the day before he turned 14 and remained forever young in his mother's memory.

Initially, on the grave of Gogol in the monastery cemetery lay a stone, nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its similarity with Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, when reburial in another place, they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And the same stone was subsequently placed on the grave of Bulgakov by his wife.

In this regard, Bulgakov's phrase is noteworthy, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime: "Teacher, cover me with your overcoat."

After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was evacuated to the city of Yelabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring her of its strength, he joked: "The rope will withstand everything, even hang yourself." Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga.

Daria Dontsova, whose father was Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by creative intelligentsia.

Once at school, she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story“ The Lone Sail Is Whitening? ”And Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a deuce, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev didn’t think about it at all!”

• Interestingly, two writers of the late XVIII- early XIX centuries Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin and Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin descended from immigrants from the Mongol-Tatar Horde. The ancestor of the first was a certain Bagrim-Murza, who left for Moscow from the Great Horde and after baptism entered the service of Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich. The ancestor of the second was Tatar Murza Kara-Murza.

• The maternal ancestor of A. S. Pushkin was a Negro, a native of Africa, “the black of Peter the Great” - Abram Petrovich Hannibal.

• A crater on Mercury is named in honor of Gavriil Romanovich Derzhavin.

• Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov is the creator of the first scientific Russian grammar.

• It was Lomonosov who introduced into science a number of Russian words that had everyday meaning, such as: experience, phenomenon, movement, particle.

• Karamzin enriched the language with tracing words, such as “love”, “impression” and “influence”, “touching” and “entertaining”. It was he who introduced into use the words "industry", "concentrate", "aesthetic", "moral", "epoch", "stage", "harmony", "catastrophe", "future". According to , this glorious historian and writer "liberated the language from an alien yoke and returned its freedom, turning it to the living sources of the people's word."

• Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov worked hard on processing his native poetic speech. He gave the Russian poetic language such harmony, flexibility, elasticity that Russian poetry had not yet known. According to Belinsky, the perfection of Pushkin's verse and the richness of poetic turns and expressions were largely prepared by the works of Zhukovsky and.

• Pushkin called Batyushkov "a happy associate of Lomonosov, who did for the Russian language the same thing that Petrarch did for Italian."

• heavy mental illness Batyushkov, where he lived for almost 35 recent years his life away from everyone who knew him before, was the reason that the story began for him alive. They began to judge him long before his death as a dead man, a figure of the past, without his knowledge, the collections of his works were reprinted twice. He did not know that the criticism put him in the ranks of Russians classical writers, Pushkin 's immediate predecessors . He died of typhus on July 7, 1855. He was buried in the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery, five versts from Vologda.

• Creator of modern literary language considered Alexander Pushkin, whose works are considered the pinnacle of Russian literature.

• Leo Tolstoy was the first to refuse copyright, for not recognizing religious authorities excommunicated, was an opponent of the state system.

• Being versatile talented person, Lermontov, in addition to literary creativity was a good artist and loved math. Elements of higher mathematics, the beginning of differential and integral calculus, analytic geometry fascinated Lermontov throughout his life. He always carried a math textbook with him. French author Bezu

You can find a huge amount of information about famous writers - how they lived, how they created their immortal works. And we want to bring to your attention interesting and not quite ordinary facts from the life of famous writers. Reading interesting book, the reader usually does not think about the features of the character and lifestyle of the writer who wrote it, and yet some facts of his biography or the history of the creation of a particular book are sometimes very entertaining and even cause a smile.

Once at Francois Rabelais there was no money to get from Lyon to Paris. Then he prepared three bags with the inscriptions "Poison for the King", "Poison for the Queen" and "Poison for the Dauphin" and left them in a hotel room in a conspicuous place. Upon learning of this, the owner of the hotel immediately reported to the authorities. Rabelais was seized and taken with an escort to the capital directly to King Francis I, so that he would decide the fate of the writer. It turned out that the packages contained sugar, which Rabelais immediately drank with a glass of water, and then told the king, with whom they were friends, how he solved his problem.

Charles Dickens I drank half a liter of champagne every day. It all started with the fact that in 1858 Dickens, in order to raise his popularity by new level decided to give lectures. His performances were extremely successful, and he traveled all over England, and then went to America. And where there is a lecture, there is a subsequent meeting with readers! How is it without champagne! In addition, the writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head to the north. He also sat facing north when he wrote his great works.

Franz Kafka was humblest man. Everything that he wrote, he practically did not publish, but he always read aloud to his three Prague friends. Being seriously ill, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works after his death, including several unfinished novels. Brod did not comply with this request, but, on the contrary, ensured the publication of the works that brought Kafka worldwide fame.

Ilf and Petrov thought-stamps were avoided in a very original way. They discarded ideas that came to the mind of both at once.

Marie Francois Arouet (Voltaire) wrote several works at the same time. Sitting down at his desk, depending on his mood, he took the manuscript and continued to work on it.

Kir Bulychev- this is the final pseudonym of Vsevolod Mozheiko, but in general he changed them every month, especially when he worked in the magazine "Around the World". Once he signed himself "Sarah Phan", but he was accused of anti-Semitism. We decided to just put "S. Fan", but it was considered an attack against Korean people. Then Bulychev signed: "Ivan Shlagbaum." Alexandre Dumas father(1802-1870), whose green collected works in fifteen volumes occupies bookshelves in many apartments, far from writing all these adventure novels himself. A whole staff of "literary blacks" worked for Dumas - at other times their number reached 70 people. More often than others, Dumas collaborated with the writer Auguste Macke (1813-1888), who wrote, in particular, significant pieces of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Montecristo. From the correspondence between Dumas and Macke, it follows that the latter's contribution to the novels beloved by many was very significant.

The main plot of the immortal work N. V. Gogol"Inspector" was suggested to the author by A. S. Pushkin. These great classics were good friends. Once Alexander Sergeevich told Nikolai Vasilyevich an interesting fact from the life of the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province. It was this case that formed the basis of the work of Nikolai Gogol. Throughout the writing of The Inspector General, Gogol often wrote to Pushkin about his work, told him what stage it was in, and also repeatedly reported that he wanted to quit it. However, Pushkin forbade him to do this, so the "Inspector General" was still completed. By the way, Pushkin, who was present at the first reading of the play, was completely delighted with it.

The stable phrase "lost generation" came to us from the works Ernest Hemingway. The lost generation of Hemingway are young people who found themselves at the front in early age(for Hemingway, first of all, the period between the two world wars), often not yet finished school, undecided in life, but early on began to kill. After returning from the war, such people, morally or physically crippled, often could not adapt to civilian life, many committed suicide, some went crazy. " by the lost generation"became also called the literary movement that united such famous writers like Ham himself, James Joyce, Erich Maria Remarque, Henri Barbusse, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Darya Dontsova, whose father was the Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by creative intelligentsia. Once at school, she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The lonely sail is whitening”?”, And Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a deuce, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev didn’t think about that at all!”

Belarusian poet Adam Miscavige was also a science fiction writer. In Future Story, he wrote about acoustic devices that can be used to listen to concerts from the city while sitting by the fireplace, as well as mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets.

Honore de Balzac He wrote in the dark, so even during the day he curtained the curtains and lit candles. Starting to work on a new piece balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and tightly closed the shutters so that light would not penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a bathrobe, for 18 hours a day.

At Lord Byron there were four domestic geese that followed him everywhere, even at social gatherings. Despite his overweight and rather strong clubfoot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of his time.

For close relatives, he was Ronald, for school friends - John Ronald. At Oxford University, where he first studied and then taught, he was called "Tollers". It's about O John Ronald Rowan Tolkien. By the way, in Denmark there is The Tolkien Ensemble - an ensemble named after Tolkien. This is Danish Symphony Orchestra performing musical pieces based on the works of Tolkien. He has the support of Queen Margaret II, a big fan of Tolkien's books, who herself illustrates his books.

Frankenstein- this is not the name of the famous monster. In Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818, this very monster was simply called "The Monster". Victor Frankenstein was the name of a young scientist student from Geneva who created a living being from non-living material.

Mark Twain was a good inventor. Among his developments - a notepad with tear-off leaves for journalists, a wardrobe with sliding shelves, as well as the most ingenious of his inventions - a tie-tying machine!

Real surname Daniel Defoe, was not de Fo, indicating a noble birth, but simply Fo. By the way, he wrote not one book at all, but more than 300. Moreover, among his works there are a lot scientific works on history, economics, geography, and a series of books on demonology and magic. He even wrote a book about the history of the reign of Peter I. One of the most prolific writers of all times and peoples was a Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to The Dog in the Manger, he wrote another 1,800 plays, all of them in verse. He did not work on any play for more than 3 days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers.

The life and work of world literary luminaries is rich in all sorts of interesting things. For example, Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov), industry (Karamzin), bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin), fade away (Dostoevsky), mediocrity (Severyanin), exhausted (Khlebnikov). In our library you can dive into fascinating world masterpieces of world literature, as well as to increase your erudition by getting acquainted with a lot of new information. We are waiting for you in our library!