Readers crowded about, one wanting to know whether the location in his memoir's title, The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue, was in Brooklyn or the Bronx. The Bronx, said Klein, selling soft.

Begging for blurbs is one of the more misery-producing aspects of being published. It can leave us desperate and depressed. It's humiliating to have to grovel for blurbs, rather than have your publisher secure them for you.

By Emily Temple for Flavorwire: We tend to put our favorite authors on a pedestal, and in some ways when we do that, we turn them into characters t...

From Flavorwire: Nearly two centuries after her death, it’s still unclear what killed Jane Austen. Biographers have attributed Austen’s demise ...

The Bronte sisters weren't alone in blood being as thick as ink.

When I sit down to work, I keep a small bowl of garlic croutons on my desk. These are little rewards for good ideas and strong lines, Pavlovian pellet...

Why is it that the book for which an author is best known is rarely their best? If history is the final judge of literary achievement, why has a title...

Few headlines will draw our attention faster than “Pin-ups based on Haruki Murakami books.” Little did we know that Super Punch’s post would lea...

From Flavorwire: It's an old topic but it always manages to be interesting -- what did the authors we love do in order to write what they did? Beyo...

Curiosity about great novelists has inspired me to read dozens of author biographies. In those books (and on the Web), one can discover many "wow"-inducing facts about renowned writers

On a family vacation from Wisconsin to Dauphin Island, Alabama, we stopped at Lincoln's home in Springfield, IL to take a tour. In the front parlor there was a photograph of Honest Abe hanging on the wall.

Terry Breverton selects some of literature's most memorable farewells, from Samuel Johnson to James Joyce...

Although there are no direct descendants of Sam Clemens, one could argue that there are descendants of the persona "Mark Twain," such as satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

An aspect of Twain's legacy that many aren't aware of is that he was America's first notable animal rights activist. Animals were always central to Twain's writing, from his first stories through his final years.

Last week, we posted a list of 12 literary "one-hit wonders," authors that may have written a number of great books, but who are generally remembered ...