This quote comes from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Published in 1960, the novel follows two young children, Scout and Jem, and their lawyer father, Atticus Finch, as he defends a wrongfully accused black man in Depression era-Alabama. To Kill a Mockingbird met instant critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. To Kill a Mockingbird was long Harper Lee’s only published work. However, in 2015, she released Go Set a Watchman, a sequel of sorts to her previous work. Regardless of the literary quality of the novel, many critics felt that Lee—now 89 years old, deaf, and […]
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Our newest book poster features Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island! This 18″x24″ Treasure Island book poster features the full text of the novel in a crisp 2.63 Helvetica font. Here, the Hispaniola sets her first sights on fabled Treasure Island, where mutineers and crew alike hope to find Captain Flint’s buried treasure. Head over to our Treasure Island book poster product page to see more.
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Happy holidays from Books on the Wall! We hope your holiday season is merry, bright, and filled with books.
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In the spirit of Christmas, today we’re delving into Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, one of the most beloved holiday stories of all time. For those who aren’t familiar with the prolific British author, we’ll also give a brief biography of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Facts Title: A Christmas Carol Author: Charles Dickens Publication date and place: December 1843, London (Chapman & Hall) Word count: 28,944 Genre: Victorian literary fiction, morality tale Plot Summary One of Dickens’ shorter works, A Christmas Carol is divided into five chapters, or “staves” (meaning a song stanza). The novella follows Ebenezer […]
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These are the last words of Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. Loosely based on Ernest Hemingway’s real-life group of friends, the novel follows American expatriate Jake Barnes and his love interest, Englishwoman Brett Ashley. Often considered Hemingway’s finest novel, The Sun Also Rises captures readers with its depiction of glitzy Parisian cafes, excessive drinking, women’s sexual liberation and the tragic seduction of Pamplona bullfighting. Beyond a single work, though, Ernest Hemingway is remembered for writing about the Lost Generation and for his distinctly sparse, action-driven prose. (His unique writing style has even inspired an eponymous editing app.) “Isn’t it […]
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One of our most beloved authors, Joseph Heller, passed away on this day 16 years ago. Heller was a brilliant satirist, a keen observer of human and societal absurdity, and a spinner of inimitable phrases and puns. Joseph Heller’s life Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. He graduated high school in 1941 and then joined the U.S. Army Air Corps shortly after the United States entered World War II. He trained as a B-25 bombadier, flying 60 missions out of Corsicana. After the war, Heller attended NYU for his undergraduate degree and Columbia University for his master’s degree […]
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This quote is spoken by Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has become Austen’s most famous work, due in no small part to the BBC mini-series and 2005 movie of the same name. Pride and Prejudice follows Elizabeth Bennet as she navigates British society’s (and her family’s) expectations for marriage, manners and morals. “What are men to rocks and mountains?” Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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Despite their regular global success, Disney movies aren’t known for being particularly accurate. They are generally neither true to history, like in the case of Pocahontas, nor to their original fictional source (see: The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Tarzan and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, among others). That last one is the focus of our post today. So how does the Disney animated movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, differ from the original book by Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris? Obvious Differences Illustration of the Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, via Wikimedia Commons Let’s start with the “no-duh” differences between […]
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This quote comes from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1890. A brilliant wordsmith, Oscar Wilde is perhaps most known for his sharp turn of turn-of-phrase and memorable one-liners which hide a kernal of truth in a pithy joke. When The Picture of Dorian Gray was published, British reviewers were scandalized by its so-called moral impropriety, and some even suggested that Wilde be prosecuted for violating public morality. Wilde’s reply to these critics, published in the print version of the novel, has become as famous as the novel itself: “There is no such thing as a moral […]
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