Curated playlist
Maritime writers
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- Herman MelvilleHerman Melville's death notice misspelled his great novel as "Mobie Dick."
- Jules VerneJules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979. Only Agatha Christie ranks higher.
- Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling turned down both a knighthood and the Poet Laureateship. He won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad spoke English with a strong foreign accent all his life. He still became a great English-language writer.
- Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Stevenson was left out of a 2,000-page Oxford anthology in 1973.
- James CookCaptain James Cook tried to kidnap a Hawaiian king to get a stolen boat back.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
- Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle once bowled out the famous cricketer W. G. Grace and wrote a poem about it.
- Daniel DefoeDaniel Defoe stood in a pillory in 1703 for a pamphlet. Years later he wrote Robinson Crusoe.