Who invented the golliwog?
The golliwog, a type of doll known as “the blackest gnome,” was invented by Florence K.
Upton in The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a “Golliwog” (1895). More golliwog tales followed until 1909.
The golliwog, a type of doll known as “the blackest gnome,” was invented by Florence K.
Upton in The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a “Golliwog” (1895). More golliwog tales followed until 1909.
Leo Tolstoy served in the Crimean War (1853-56), though he is best known for his treatment of the Napoleonic Wars in War and Peace (1863-69).
Natty Bumppo’s Indian sidekick was Chingachgook. He appears in Cooper’s The Deer-slayer (1841), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Pioneers (1823).
The pseudonym Martinus Scriblerus was adopted by several members of the Scriblerus Club, a group formed to ridicule “false tastes in learning.” Members of the club included Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, and John Gay. The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, written mainly by Arbuthnot, were issued in 1741.
“Laugh, and the world laughs with you,/ Weep, and you weep alone” are the opening lines of the poem “Solitude” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1855-1919).
The 1941 Broadway play Arsenic and Old Lace was written by Joseph Kesselring. The 1946 movie adaptation was directed by Frank Capra.
The first part of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls is recognized as a comic masterpiece, but the second part never saw the light of day. Convinced by the radical priest Father Matthew Konstantinovsky that literature was sinful, Gogol (1809-52) burned the manuscript of Part Two in 1852. He died a few days later.