Charles Dickens wrote two historical novels: A Tale of Two Cities (1859), set in London and Paris during the French Revolution, and Barnaby Rudge (1841), set during the anti-Catholic riots sparked by Lord George Gordon in 1780.
Margaret Mitchell’s 1937 Pulitzer Prize winner Gone with the Wind has been translated into 27 languages and has sold over 20 million copies.
The 1941 Broadway play Arsenic and Old Lace was written by Joseph Kesselring. The 1946 movie adaptation was directed by Frank Capra.
The archetypal villain Simon Legree first appeared in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) as the brutal degenerate who flogs Tom to death.
Shangri-La, the setting for James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon supposedly has a real-life counterpart in Hunza, Pakistan. The community, which boasts of having the healthiest people in the world, many over 100 years old, is located at the borders of Pakistan, China, and the Soviet Union.
None. Hector’s parents, Priam and Hecuba, are both human.
Anne Tyler’s first novel was If Morning Ever Comes (1965), written in her early twenties. Born in 1941, Tyler was respected by critics but did not become widely known until Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in 1982.