Ever wonder if your favorite authors were secretly in a group chat? While they didnโt have Slack, the history of literature is full of strange coincidences, unexpected friendships, and bets that changed the course of books forever.
Here are five hidden literary connections that will make you look like the smartest person at your next book club.
1. Dr. Seuss and the 50-Word Bet
We all know Green Eggs and Ham, but it wasnโt born out of a simple burst of creativity. It was the result of a high-stakes dare. Bennett Cerf, the founder of Random House, bet Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) $50 that he couldn't write a book using 50 or fewer distinct words.
Seuss won the bet, using exactly 50 words to create a masterpiece. Interestingly, Cerf never actually paid up, but the book went on to sell millions, so Seuss got the last laugh.
2. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vacation
In the summer of 1816 the "Year Without a Summer", a group of literary icons stayed at Villa Diodati in Switzerland. The guest list was wild: Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Because the weather was too gloomy to go outside, Byron proposed a ghost story contest. This single rainy vacation gave birth to:
Mary Shelleyโs Frankenstein, the first true sci-fi novel.
John Polidoriโs The Vampyre which influenced Bram Stokerโs Dracula.
3. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Tree
The creators of Narnia and Middle-earth werenโt just contemporaries; they were best friends. They were part of an informal writing group at Oxford called The Inklings.
Tolkien actually credits Lewis with being the only reason The Lord of the Rings was ever finished. Lewis was his first audience and constantly pushed him to keep writing when Tolkien got bogged down in elvish linguistics. Without Lewis's nagging, we might never have left the Shire.
4. The James Bond / Roald Dahl Link
You know Roald Dahl for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but did you know he was a spy? During WWII, Dahl worked for the British Intelligence service alongside Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond.
Dahlโs life was so much like a Bond film that he eventually wrote the screenplay for the Bond movie You Only Live Twice. He even invented the child-snatching Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the book for which was also written by Fleming.
5. Alice in Wonderlandโs Medical Legacy
Lewis Carroll, Charles Dodgson suffered from severe migraines that caused him to see objects as much larger or smaller than they actually were. This neurological phenomenon is now officially known in the medical world as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome AIWS.
Scholars believe Carroll used his own terrifying sensory distortions as the inspiration for Alice growing and shrinking in the Rabbit Hole.
โ๏ธWhich of these facts surprised you the most? Let me know in the comments if you knew about the Dahl/Bond connection that one always blows my mind!
