Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books
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The captivating stories behind fifty of the greatest authors and their most famous literary creationsBefore Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara ?, there had never been a single volume that explored the backstories of so many of the greatest books in the English language. A work sure to captivate all lovers of language and literature, it reveals in short, pithy chapters, the lives, loves, motivations, and quirky, fascinating details involving fifty of the best-loved books of the Western world. • When stacked up, the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind stood taller than Margaret Mitchell, its 4' 9 1/2" author • Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was part of the Allied team that cracked the Nazi's Enigma code • Leo Tolstoy's wife copied War and Peace by hand . . . seven times From The Great Gatsby to Harper Lee, from Jaws to J. K . Rowling, Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara? offers an entertaining and informative journey through the minds of writers and the life experiences that took these amazing works from notion to novel.Publishers WeeklyFrom Stephen King's childhood fascination with gruesome comics to the famous family name behind Peter Benchley, book-lovers and first time authors Bond and Sheedy light up some intriguing angles on many popular authors. Journalists in Australia, the authors deliver their 50 profiles with reportorial vigor, moving quickly through each profile while highlighting the salient and salacious details of, for example, the role played by Mary Shelley's literary legacy (daughter of two leading British writers) and her free-love husband (poet Percy Shelley) in the genesis of Frankenstein. Surprising words from the authors themselves adorn many profiles; said Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird, "I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers." Between the engaging information and the range of popular texts (Pride and Prejudice, The Origin of Species, The War of the Worlds, In Cold Blood, Lolita, Roots, The Cat in the Hat, The Da Vinci Code), this affectionate literary history should appeal to many readers. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
FictionPride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813 1Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818 9Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens, 1838 16Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, 1847 23Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847 31Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866 38War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, 1867-1869 44Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1885 52The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells, 1897 58The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902 65Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie, 1904 71The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 76Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne, 1926 82All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, 1929 87Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936 92The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937 98The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939 104For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, 1940 110Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949 118The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger, 1951 125From Here to Eternity, James Jones, 1951 131Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953 137Lord of the Flies, William Golding, 1954 143Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955 148The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss, 1957 155Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, 1957 160To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960 167The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carre, 1963 172Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann, 1966 178The Godfather, Mario Puzo, 1969 184The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth, 1971 189Game, Stephen King, 1974 195Jaws, Peter Benchley, 1974 201Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie, 1981 205The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982 210Hollywood Wives, Jackie Collins, 1983 215Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding, 1996 219HarryPotter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J. K. Rowling, 1997 225True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey, 2000 231The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, 2003 237NonfictionThe English Dictionary, Samuel Johnson, 1755 247Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1768 253The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1859 258Scouting for Boys, Robert Baden-Powell, 1908 266Etiquette in Business, in Society, in Politics, and at Home, Emily Post, 1922 271Guinness World Records, 1955 275In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1966 280All the President's Men, Bob Woodward and Carl BernsteinRoots, Alex Haley, 1976 292A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, 1988 299Further Reading 305
