Curated playlist
Novelists from Massachusetts
- Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe's executor used forged letters to paint him as a drunken madman.
- Herman MelvilleHerman Melville's death notice misspelled his great novel as "Mobie Dick."
- Jack KerouacJack Kerouac typed On the Road on a 120-foot roll of taped tracing paper. He finished the final draft in 20 days.
- David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace wrote a novel that Time magazine placed among the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. That book was Infinite Jest, and it reached readers in 1996. Years later, the critic David Ulin wrote…
- Henry Wadsworth LongfellowLongfellow used his own body to smother the flames on his wife's burning dress. He wore a beard from then on.
- Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne paid $100 to print his first novel, then tried to suppress every surviving copy.
- Vladimir NabokovNovelist Vladimir Nabokov also named butterfly species, and later genetic research backed his theory.
- Junot DíazJunot Díaz arrived in New Jersey at six unable to speak English. He later won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in a 1941 story, thinking it was just a natural term.
- George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…