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The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. More about Literature...
Nineteen Eighty-Four (also titled 1984),[1] by George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair), is a 1949 English novel about life under a futuristic authoritarian regime in the year 1984. It tells the story of Winston Smith, a functionary at the Ministry of Truth, whose work consists of editing historical accounts to fit the government's policies. Smith is degraded and tortured after he is arrested by the Thought Police under the instruction of the totalitarian government of Oceania.
The book has major significance for its vision of an all-knowing government which uses pervasive and constant surveillance of the populace, insidious and blatant propaganda, and brutal control over its citizens. The book had a substantial impact both in literature and on the perception of public surveillance, inspiring such terms as 'Big Brother' and 'Orwellian'.
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Cover of Undine, a novel by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué.
... that Anna Akhmatova (Russian: А́нна Ахма́това, pictured) was an eminent Russian Acmeist poet whose works were banned from publication during Stalin's dictatorship?
... that Le Malade imaginaire, first performed in 1673, is Molière's final play?
... that "Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans" is a song by Noel Coward written and released during the Second World War as part of his contribution to the war effort?
... that Ivan Cankar is considered the most famous Slovenian writer, and that his 1904 novel Hiša Marije Pomočnice (The Ward of Our Lady of Mercy) is about a group of terminally ill girls awaiting their deaths in a hospital in fin de siècle Vienna?
... that Jeff Abbott, John le Carré, Manning Coles, James Munro, and Daniel Silva are authors of spy fiction?
... that the Goethe-Institut, founded in 1925 to promote German language and culture outside of the German-speaking countries, is named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
... that, as one critic put it, "some of the descriptions of the sex scenes" in Ben Elton's Past Mortem "might prove a bit much for the faint-hearted"?
| “ | There isn't a such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. | ” |
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- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891, preface
- 1719 - John Harris, English writer died
- 1866 - Tristan Bernard, French writer born
- 1870 - Aleksandr Kuprin, Russian writer born
- 1881 - Sidney Lanier, American writer died
- 1885 - Elinor Wylie, American writer born
- 1887 - Edith Sitwell, English poet born
- 1900 - Taylor Caldwell, American author born
- 1962 - Karen Blixen, Danish author died
- 1962 - Jennifer Egan, American writer born
- 1994 - James Clavell, Australian-born American author (Shogun) died
- 3 August, 2008 - Soviet-era dissident and Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dies.
- 12 July, 2008 - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie is awarded The Best of the Booker, as the best novel to have won a Man Booker Prize in the first 40 years of its existence.
- 4 May, 2008 - Richard Morgan's Black Man wins the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award. (Guardian)
- 14 March, 2008 - Novelist Kate Christensen has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel The Great Man. (Guardian)
New books
- The Enchantress of Florence (June 3) by Salman Rushdie
- A Mercy (November 11) by Toni Morrison
Subcategories of Literature:
Anthropomorphism – Books – Children's books – Essays – Essayists – Fiction – Genres – Gothic writing – LGBT literature – Literary awards – Literary characters – Literary concepts – Literary genres – Literary magazines – Literary movements – Literature by nationality – Literature in English – Medieval literature – Minimalism – Motif of harmful sensation – Narratology – Novels – Pataphysics – Plays – Poetry – Short stories – Small press publishers – Literature stubs – Theatre – Traditional stories – Writers – Young adult literature – Zines
WikiProjects connected with literature:
- Copyedit: Cotillion (novel), Imperium (novel), Nikolai Minsky, Die Räuber, Tea Classics, The Thin Red Line, More...
- Wikify: More...
- Merge: More...
- Start an article: fictography, Basque literature, Belarus literature, gutter rhyme, photobiography, seven by nine squares, working class literature, More...
- Expand: alter ego, English studies, Verisimilitude, Flash prose, German literature of the Baroque period, Identification, composite character, hexameter, internal rhyme, hypertextuality, Midnight Magic, Modernist poetry, high burlesque, Swahili literature, The Freedom Writers Diary, More...
