Who the Hell Is Pansy O'Hara?: The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books - Softcover

Bond, Jenny; Sheedy, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014311364X ISBN 13: 9780143113645

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2008

Synopsis

The captivating stories behind fifty of the greatest authors and their most famous literary creations

Before Who the Hell is Pansy O?Hara ?, there had never been a single volume that explored the backstories of so many of the greatest books in the English language. A work sure to captivate all lovers of language and literature, it reveals in short, pithy chapters, the lives, loves, motivations, and quirky, fascinating details involving fifty of the best-loved books of the Western world.
? When stacked up, the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind stood taller than Margaret Mitchell, its 4' 9 1/2" author
? Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was part of the Allied team that cracked the Nazi?s Enigma code
? Leo Tolstoy?s wife copied War and Peace by hand . . . seven times

From The Great Gatsby to Harper Lee, from Jaws to J. K . Rowling, Who the Hell Is Pansy O?Hara? offers an entertaining and informative journey through the minds of writers and the life experiences that took these amazing works from notion to novel.

About this title

About the Author:

Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy run the freelance journalism company The Hard Word. Their work has been published in The Sun-Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sunday Telegraph, Virgin Blue Voyeur, Woman?s Day, TV Week, FHM, and Cleo.

From Publishers Weekly:

From Stephen King's childhood fascination with gruesome comics to the famous family name behind Peter Benchley, book-lovers and first time authors Bond and Sheedy light up some intriguing angles on many popular authors. Journalists in Australia, the authors deliver their 50 profiles with reportorial vigor, moving quickly through each profile while highlighting the salient and salacious details of, for example, the role played by Mary Shelley's literary legacy (daughter of two leading British writers) and her free-love husband (poet Percy Shelley) in the genesis of Frankenstein. Surprising words from the authors themselves adorn many profiles; said Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird, "I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers." Between the engaging information and the range of popular texts (Pride and Prejudice, The Origin of Species, The War of the Worlds, In Cold Blood, Lolita, Roots, The Cat in the Hat, The Da Vinci Code), this affectionate literary history should appeal to many readers.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 014311364X
• ISBN 13: 9780143113645
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336