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Of Words and Dogs and Little Fishes*

Published on : 9 July, 201825 August, 2019 Published by : Sharon Browning

I feel so blessed that I can “work” from home as a book reviewer, essayist and occasionally as a literary editor, and to comfortably say that I read for a living. It’s like living the dream (well, until the bills come in, but that’s neither here nor there). But I […]

On this day, January 27, in 1832, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was born in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. The creator of Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and Jabberwocky was the oldest boy in a family of 11 children. Tall and thin, with a bad knee, deaf in one ear, with a stammer that affected him his whole life and weak lungs due to an early bout of whooping cough, he nevertheless was a talented, if somewhat undisciplined, student. A skilled mathematician, he was also an inventor and professional photographer. He died in 1898 of pneumonia, just two weeks shy of turning 66.

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.

Of Words and Dogs and Little Fishes*

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