Portal:Literature/Did you know/Week 14

... that "Richard Cory" is an 1897 poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson about a business magnate who commits suicide, and that it was adapted by Simon & Garfunkel for their 1966 album, Sounds of Silence?

... that Marshall McLuhan, Henry Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, C. P. Snow and Mae West all died in 1980?

... that the title of Arthur Miller's 1994 play Broken Glass refers to the pogrom of 1938 euphemistically called "Reichskristallnacht"?

... that an illuminated manuscript (pictured) is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations?

... that Helpless is a play by Dusty Hughes set in England before, during, and after the 1997 general elections which resulted in Tony Blair's landslide victory?

... that Christina Goering, one of the title characters of Jane Bowles's 1943 novel Two Serious Ladies, is a wealthy spinster who ends up as a high-class call girl?

... that French novelist Pierre Boulle used his own experiences in the Second World War to write Le pont de la rivière Kwaï (1952)?