http://interestingliterature.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/the-best-literary-facts-from-the-twitterverse/
Follow the link above for some fascinating literary tidbits. If you don’t have the time to wade through all for the horror triva, here they are:
Bram Stoker’s wife, Florence Balcombe, was previously suitored by Oscar Wilde. (@l0lhey)
In 1862, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton was offered the chance to be King of Greece. (@LeighaMcR)
Dickens & Poe were friends. 3 letters between them survive (alas, letters don’t mention of the death of Dickens’ pet raven). (@LauraShovan)
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, for those of you not into horror esoterica, was a well-known writer of the nineteenth century who dabbled in a variety of genres. H.P. Lovecraft thought highly of his story “The House and the Brain”, which is included in the collection The World’s Greatest Horror Stories (2004, edited by Stephen Jones and Dave Carson). According to Wikipedia, Bulwer-Lytton was the originator of some very famous and very frequently coined phrases that are still around: “the pen is mightier than the sword”, “the great unwashed”, and “the almighty dollar”. Bulwer-Lytton also invented that well-known line with which Snoopy invariably starts his novel in “Peanuts”: “it was a dark and stormy night…”
Thoughts? Comments?
