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The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. More about Literature...
William Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian writer who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome" and later popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984). In visualising cyberspace, Gibson created an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as videogames and the Web.
Having moved around frequently with his family as a child, Gibson grew to be a shy, ungainly teenager who took refuge in reading science fiction. After spending his adolescence at a private boarding school in Arizona, Gibson dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by emigrating to Canada in 1967, where he became immersed in the counterculture and after settling in Vancouver eventually became a full-time writer. He retains dual citizenship. Gibson's early works are bleak, noir near-future stories about the effect of cybernetics and computer networks on humans – "lowlife meets high tech". The short stories were published in leading science fiction magazines and eventually revived science fiction, which at the time was widely considered insignificant. The themes, settings and characters developed in these stories culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer, which garnered critical and commercial success, virtually launching the cyberpunk literary movement.
Felbrigge Psalter, the earliest example of an embroidered book in existence.
... that the Roman de la Rose is a late mediæval French poem about love and courtship, and that it was translated into Middle English — partly by Geoffrey Chaucer — as The Romaunt of the Rose (pictured)?
... that New York-born Anna Katharine Green was one of the first U.S. writers of detective fiction, and that her works inspired Agatha Christie to become a mystery writer?
... that Glenway Wescott's novel Apartment in Athens is set in Nazi-occupied Greece?
... that in the English-speaking world a matinée is the showing of a play in the afternoon, whereas in German-speaking countries the same word denotes a performance which takes place before noon?
... that Steven Berkoff's play Decadence was filmed in 1994 starring Joan Collins and the author himself, who also directed the movie?
... that Marsha Hunt was born in Philadelphia, was a member of the cast in the London production of the musical Hair, had a daughter, Karis, by Mick Jagger, published her first novel, Joy, in 1990, and was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004?
... that the plot of Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis's 1993 movie Groundhog Day shows striking parallels to Ken Grimwood's 1987 time travel novel Replay?
| “ | At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done. | ” |
- 1874 - Zona Gale, American novelist born
- 1875 - John Buchan, Scottish novelist born
- 1880 - Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet born
- 1904 - Christopher Isherwood, English writer born
- 1914 - Julio Cortázar, Argentine writer born
- 1945 - Franz Werfel, Austrian writer died
- 1979 - Mika Waltari, Finnish author died
- 1989 - Irving Stone, American author died
- 3 August, 2008 - Soviet-era dissident and Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dies.
- 12 July, 2008 - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie is awarded The Best of the Booker, as the best novel to have won a Man Booker Prize in the first 40 years of its existence.
- 4 May, 2008 - Richard Morgan's Black Man wins the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award. (Guardian)
- 14 March, 2008 - Novelist Kate Christensen has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel The Great Man. (Guardian)
New books
- The Enchantress of Florence (June 3) by Salman Rushdie
- A Mercy (November 11) by Toni Morrison
Subcategories of Literature:
Anthropomorphism – Books – Children's books – Essays – Essayists – Fiction – Genres – Gothic writing – LGBT literature – Literary awards – Literary characters – Literary concepts – Literary genres – Literary magazines – Literary movements – Literature by nationality – Literature in English – Medieval literature – Minimalism – Motif of harmful sensation – Narratology – Novels – Pataphysics – Plays – Poetry – Short stories – Small press publishers – Literature stubs – Theatre – Traditional stories – Writers – Young adult literature – Zines
WikiProjects connected with literature:
- Copyedit: Cotillion (novel), Imperium (novel), Nikolai Minsky, Die Räuber, Tea Classics, The Thin Red Line, More...
- Wikify: More...
- Merge: More...
- Start an article: fictography, Basque literature, Belarus literature, gutter rhyme, photobiography, seven by nine squares, working class literature, More...
- Expand: alter ego, English studies, Verisimilitude, Flash prose, German literature of the Baroque period, Identification, composite character, hexameter, internal rhyme, hypertextuality, Midnight Magic, Modernist poetry, high burlesque, Swahili literature, The Freedom Writers Diary, More...
