Ernest Hemingway’s first book was Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923); it was published in France in a small edition.
His first book published in the United States was In Our Time (1925), an expanded edition of the version published in France in 1924.
These occupations of characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1387-1400) refer to the following: summoner—an officer who summoned suspects before the ecclesiastical courts canon’s yeoman—an attendant of a canon; a canon was a clergyman associated with a cathedral or large church franklin—a prosperous country man of low birth manciple—a steward of a community of lawyers…
In act 1, scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s father says she “hath not seen the change of fourteen years”, making her thirteen.
Mr. Dooley’s first name was Martin. The Irish saloon keeper was created by Chicago newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne in 1892, and provided the moniker for a series of satirical books by Dunne, including Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War (1898) and Mr. Dooley’s Opinions (1901).
Writer George Henry Lewes (1817-78), who was officially married to another woman, Agnes, but unable to get a divorce, was George Eliot’s (1819-80) living companion. Eliot and Lewes lived together from 1854 until his death in 1878.
Mother Goose first appeared in Charles Perrault’s Mother Goose Tales (1697), a collection of popular folk stories. She is depicted at the front of the book in an illustration of an old woman telling tales by firelight to children.
The subtitle of Melville’s short story “Bartle by the Scrivener” is “A Story of Wall Street.”