Literary Fact of the Day | February 2011

Another month, another batch of literary trivia. As always, you can get your Literary Fact of the Day piping fresh each day by following The Ape on Twitter (@readingape) or just stick out for the monthly round-up. (March will feature tidbits about the authors on our 100 Greatest American Novels list).

Here they are (were):

• After the the publication of THE JUNGLE in 1906, both foreign and domestic purchases of American meat fell by half.
• Jack London's father was an astrologer and his mother a spiritualist who claimed to be able to channel the spirit of an Indian chief.
• Stephen Crane was paid $700 in Spanish gold to be a war reporter in Cuba.
• Kafka's two brothers both died before the age of 2. His three sisters died in concentration camps.
• Anne Sexton was the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
• Proust did not move out of his parents' apartment until they were both dead.
•  Robert Penn Warren is the only person to win a Pulitzer for both fiction and poetry.
• Stendhal suffered so badly from syphilis late in life that he could barely hold a pen & had to dictate The Charterhouse of Parma.
• Emily Dickinson named her dog "Carlo" after St. John Rivers' dog in JANE EYRE.
• There are only 6 female authors on The Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels of the 20th Century.
• The first Gulf War so upset Barbara Kingsolver that she moved to the Canary Islands for a year.
• Valentine Edition: The oldest known connection of Saint Valentius to romantic love was made by Geoffrey Chaucer.
• Vandals have repeatedly scratched the "Hughes" off of Sylvia Plath's headstone.
• In his late teens, Aldous Huxley contracted a disease that left him totally blind for almost three years.
• After seeing August Sander's photograph "Young Farmers," Richard Powers was inspired to quit his day job to write his first novel.
• In 1886, Jules Verne was shot in the leg by his nephew. Verne then limped for the rest of his life & his nephew was sent to an asylum.
• In 1939, William S. Burroughs severed the last joint of his left little finger intentionally, in an attempt to impress a man he liked.
• Gertrude Stein enrolled in medical school at Johns Hopkins in 1899 but left after two years without finishing her degree.
• Saul Bellow went to Mexico City in 1940 to meet Trotsky, but Trotsky was assassinated the day before they were to meet.
• Maya Angelou was raped at the age of 8 by her uncle. He spent 1 day in jail but was kicked to death the next day by persons unknown.