In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys Alex Johnson’s new compendium of ‘on this day’ literary nuggets
I began this blog eleven years ago to this day, back on 1 December 2012. Since then, I have broadened my range from curious facts about literary genres and specific authors to more in-depth analysis of classic works of literature, as well as some less canonical books, poems, and other literary texts. I’ve even branched out and started analysing song lyrics, whenever a particular song strikes me as worthy of discussion, or whenever I learn something curious about a song or artist.
Running a blog like this often leads to all sorts of bigger, more ambitious ideas for projects, and especially book ideas. One book idea I toyed with developing a few years ago – which was just a private interest, although I gathered together some preliminary notes for it a number of years back – was a kind of ‘book of days’ focusing on literature. There have been books like this before: John Sutherland’s Love, Sex, Death and Words is a notable example. But every literary enthusiast can bring different facts to bear on different days of the year, and there are always more curiosities to unearth.
So it was very welcome news that Alex Johnson, author of some other notable books full of bookish facts – including a book of book lists, a book about authors and their pets, and a recent book about the rooms where famous authors worked – had written a new variation on this kind of book. The Book Lover’s Almanac: A Year of Literary Events, Letters, Scandals and Plot Twists (British Library) is described in the book’s introduction as an almanac featuring ‘tales of duelling novelists, manuscripts going up in flames, and Sylvia Plath’s culinary delights on Boxing Day.
However, the book also charts notable births, deaths, and first editions of books (or noteworthy first performances), so it can serve as both a reference work and a bedside book to dip into, every morning, so that the reader may learn a combination of factual information and literary gossip or trivia.
For example, on this day, 1 December, we learn not only that Project Gutenberg was launched in 1971 but also that, in 1977, Ted Hughes spoke at Henry Williamson’s memorial service, recounting how he read Tarka the Otter aged eleven and ‘for the next year read little else’.
Or on 12 February 1976, Marion Vargas Llosa punched Gabriel García Márquez in the face at a film premiere in Mexico City, supposedly for a remark the latter made to Vargas’ wife, although nobody is really sure; the only thing we can say for definite is that Márquez took the feud with him to his grave in 2014.
Sometimes, it’s simply nice to be reminded of a fascinating piece of literary trivia and to be able to link it to a certain day. I learn from Johnson’s book, for example, that it was on 27 May 1936 that John Steinbeck’s dog Toby ate most of the first draft of his classic novella, Of Mice and Men. This act of canine literary criticism set Steinbeck back two months in writing the book.
But Johnson adds a nice little detail: after this ‘minor tragedy’, as Steinbeck himself described it, the author wrote to his editor, Elizabeth Otis, that he had made Toby the Irish setter pup ‘lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature’.
Other days yield similarly diverting, and sometimes more surprising, nuggets of literary interest: who knew, for instance, that on 6 March 1876, Walt Whitman replied to a young Bram Stoker (who would later write Dracula), who had written the American poet an effusive fan letter?
Johnson’s monthly collections of day-by-day entries, arranged from 1 January through to 31 December, conclude with some ‘final words’ from authors who shuffled off this mortal coil in the given month: so for March, for instance, we learn that Nikolai Gogol popped his clogs after calling for someone to bring him a ladder (4 March 1852), and that D. H. Lawrence, on 2 March 1930, confidently pronounced, ‘I’m better now’ – overconfidently, as the case would have it.
This is another beautifully produced book from the British Library, although one would expect such a prestigious institution to employ more vigilant copy-editors (Philip K. Dick died in 1982, rather than 1992, as it is given here). But this is the only such slip I found in an otherwise meticulously produced tome. Johnson’s facts are clearly well-researched and he has selected them judiciously. The result is an interesting collection of literary curios, both historical milestones and entertaining titbits.
The Book Lover’s Almanac: A Year of Literary Events, Letters, Scandals and Plot Twists is out now from the British Library.