In 1897, Mark Twain was in seclusion, grieving over a death in the family, when a sensationalistic newspaper reported that he had died impoverished in London.
When a reporter appeared at Twain’s home, the writer read a prepared statement containing the famous line “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”.
Considered the oldest full novel in the world, The Tale of Genji was written in Japan toward the start of the eleventh century.
Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919) comprised of twenty-three stories.
Aeneas descends into the underworld in book VI of XII of Vergil’s Aeneid.
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.
The bank employee Joseph K. is arrested for no apparent reason on his thirtieth birthday Kafka’s The Trial.
Critics Carl and Mark Van Doren related were brothers. Both were members of the faculty of Columbia University, Carl from 1911 to 1930, Mark from 1920 to 1959.