The Wizard of Oz

THE BOOK

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an American children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum originally published on May 17, 1900.

Dorothy meets the Cowardly Lion, from the first edition

The full name of the Wizard of Oz in Frank Baum’s book was Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs.

Writer L. Frank Baum chose "Oz" as the name of the fantasy land in his The Wizard of Oz stories while making up the stories for his children and their friends. He spotted a file cabinet marked O-Z, and impulsively named the magical land was "Oz."

In the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Emerald City is not green but is just a regular city, and everyone who enters it is forced to wear green-tinted glasses.

There was a popular 1902 Broadway musical adaptation whose success led Baum to write thirteen additional Oz books that serve as official sequels to the first story.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz sold three million copies by the time it entered the public domain in 1956.

THE FILM

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was famously adapted in the 1939 film starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr. It was considered innovative because of its songs, special effects, and revolutionary use of the new Technicolor.

Theatrical release poster

The Wizard of Oz had its red-carpet premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on August 15, 1939. The premiere was a star-studded event, with many of the film's cast and crew in attendance. Judy Garland, who played Dorothy Gale, arrived at the theater in a white gown and a blue ribbon in her hair. The other stars of the film, including Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, and Bert Lahr, were also there.

When The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, over ten thousand spectators showed up.

The role of Dorothy Gale, given to Judy Garland, was originally to be played by Shirley Temple or Deanna Durbin. The wizard role was written for W.C. Fields — but he turned it down when MGM Studios refused to pay his asking price.

In the original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wore silver shoes. They used Ruby slippers in the movie to take advantage of the new Technicolor film.

The Cowardly Lion, Dorothy, Scarecrow, and the Tin Man

Due to the stubborn nature of French Bulldogs, Toto in The Wizard of Oz had to be recast as a terrier.

A cairn terrier named Terry was paid $125 a week to play the dog Toto in The Wizard Of Oz. Judy Garland, who played Dorothy was paid $500 a week.

A canine double played Toto when Terry was recovering from being stepped on by an actor.

The Cowardly Lion’s costume in The Wizard of Oz was made from a real lion skin.

The Cowardly Lion's facial makeup included a brown paper bag. Bert Lahr couldn't eat without ruining his makeup. Tired of eating soup and milkshakes, he decided to eat lunch and have his makeup redone.

The Wizard of Oz saved the lives of the "munchkins." In 1938, the Nazis plan was "exterminating undesirables," including those born with a physical impairment. Landing their roles allowed them to escape Nazi Germany and come to US. They couldn't speak English; their voices are someone else's.

The snow used in the Wizard of Oz was 100% pure asbestos.

The tornado in The Wizard of Oz is just a 35 foot (10.7 metres) stocking blown by artificial wind and dirt held up by a "gantry" on a set - the gantry cost more than the whole anticipated budget for the entire scene; $218,347.23 in today's money.

"Over the Rainbow" is a ballad composed by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Yip Harburg for The Wizard of Oz. It was sung by actress Judy Garland in her starring role as Dorothy. Arlen wrote its melody while on a drive with his wife.

"Over the Rainbow" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became Garland's signature song. It was voted song of the century by the Recording Industry Association of America.

"Over the Rainbow" was nearly cut from The Wizard of Oz as it was deemed too long. It isn't even three minutes.

The Wizard of Oz received one negative review, from the New Yorker, whose film critic despised the film's "Vulgarity [of] raw, eye-straining Technicolor" and "Singer Midgets".

While The Wizard of Oz was considered a critical success upon release, it failed to make a profit for MGM until the 1949 re-release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,777,000 budget, not including promotional costs, which made it MGM's most expensive production at that time.

 Liza Minelli, daughter of Judy Garland, was once married to Jack Haley, Jr., son of Jack Haley, the actor who played the Tin Man in the same film. He was Minnelli’s second husband.

A blue and white gingham dress worn by 17-year-old Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz sold for $266,000 (£140,000) at an auction in 2005. The dress, which has a 27in waist and Garland's name sewn on the inside hem, was one of six made for the 1939 film.

The Wizard of Oz original camera negatives are stored 650 feet underground in a Kansas salt mine.

THE MUSICAL

Wicked is a Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz , which premiered on May 28, 2003 at the Curran Theatre, San Francisco. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (published in 1995), itself a retelling of the classic 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Touring cast members in the curtain call at a show in Omaha, Nebraska, By Cornstalker

The writer of Wicked thought of Elphaba's name by using the initials of L. Frank Baum - L.F.B. = El-pha-ba.

In July 2017, Wicked surpassed The Phantom of the Opera as Broadway's second-highest grossing musical, trailing only The Lion King.

Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne for a series of books.

Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy bear owned by his son Christopher Robin Milne. The writer bought the 18-inch-high toy bear from Harrods in London. It was a present in honor of Christopher Robin's first birthday on August 21, 1921.

Milne called the toy bear "Winnie" after a Canadian black bear he often saw at London Zoo. The animal had been born in Canada but brought to London in 1914 as the mascot of a Canadian regiment. A Canadian soldier, Harry Colebourn, named him Winnie after his hometown Winnipeg.

Harry Colebourn and Winnie, 1914

The other part of the name, "Pooh," was based on a swan Milne and his family met on holiday.

Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name in a children's story published in the London Evening News on December 24, 1925.

The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, was first published on October 14, 1926.
Other stuffed animal toys owned by Milne's son were also incorporated into the story. The picture below shows some of the original Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed toys. Clockwise from bottom left: Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear ("Winnie-the-Pooh"), Eeyore, and Piglet

Winnie-The-Pooh characters each represent a different mental disorder -- Eeyore - Depression, Pooh - Addiction, Tiger - ADHD, Owl - OCD.

Eeyore's name is based off the British Cockney dialect version of the phrase "hee-haw".

The Hundred Acre Wood in the Pooh books is strongly based on Ashdown Forest in Sussex.

Winnie-the-Pooh was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children's verse book When We Were Very Young (1924) and many more in Now We Are Six (1927).

All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. An ink drawing by Shepard of Winnie-the-Pooh playing Poohsticks with Piglet and Christopher Robin sold for more than £314,000 in 2014.

Pooh in an illustration by E. H. Shepard

The "real" Christopher Robin, of whom the "Winnie the Pooh" stories were inspired by, actually hated the books.

The first time Winnie the Pooh appeared in color was in 1932. He was drawn by Stephen Slesinger in his red shirt and featured on an RCA Victor picture record.

Parker Brothers introduced a 1933 board game called A.A Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh Game with the bear showcased in his red top.

Christopher Robin was credited with killing 28 Wehrmacht soldiers in World War II's Battle of the Bulge.

Christopher Robin in 1928

Winnie Ille Pu, the 1958 Latin translation of Milne's book, is the only book in Latin ever to appear on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

The hyphens in the original Winnie-The-Pooh name were dropped when Disney bought the rights to the characters.

17-year-old Kenny Loggins wasn't going to be able to record his song "House at Pooh Corner" because Disney was enforcing their copyright to Winnie the Pooh. Upset, he mentioned this to his girlfriend, only to find out her father was the CEO of the Disney corporation– he soon got permission.

A Disney movie about Pooh, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, was made in March 1977.

A live-action movie entitled Christopher Robin, was released in 2018. It explores A.A. Milne's creation of Winnie-the-Pooh.

The Winnie-the-Pooh media franchise has generated more revenue ($76 billion) than Marvel Cinematic Universe ($35 billion) and Harry Potter ($32 billion) combined.

Christopher Robin's toy bear is on display at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library in New York City. The other original Pooh animals can also be seen there; except for Roo who was lost around 1930.

Sources Daily Express, Beliefnet

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace was published in 1869. Set during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, it tells of the interwoven histories of the poor Rostov family and the rich Bolkonskys. It is regarded as a milestone in the development of the western novel.

Front page of War and Peace, first edition, 1869 (Russian)

Originally War and Peace was going to be called "All's Well That Ends Well." and initially Tolstoy planned on basing it around the Decembrist uprising of 1825 when the liberals launched an abortive Anti-Tsarist revolt. Tolstoy drew on his family ancestral records for his material and it took him six years to write.

Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in his Yasnaya Polyana thome, which is 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, Russia, and 200 kilometres (120 mi) from Moscow.

The draft for War and Peace, the 15th longest novel in the world with around a half a million words, was written out by hand by Tolstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstaya many times, before Tolstoy was happy with his novel.

Tolstoy's notes from the ninth draft of War and Peace, 1864.

Tolstoy's original text for War And Peace in Russian and French contains about 460,000 words. The English translation has about 560,000.

There are over 500 characters in War and Peace.

War and Peace takes on average 31 hours to finish reading.

The Post-Impressionist artist, Leonid Pasternak, professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, illustrated War and Peace. He was the father of Doctor Zhivago author Boris Pasternak.

Leonid Pasternak's 1893 illustration to War and Peace

The figure of Abbé Morio in War and Peace was modeled on Scipione Piattoli, one of the drafters of the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791.

The longest movie to win an Oscar was the 1968 classic War and Peace, which ran over 7 hours.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

On March 9, 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a writer for The National Era, penned a letter to Gamaliel Bailey, who was the editor of the weekly anti-slavery journal. She told him that she planned to write a story about the problem of slavery. The result was Uncle Tom's Cabin, a story about a devout black slave, who generously saves the life of a white man only to be sold to a sadistic slave owner. The tale  graphically depicts the horrors of slavery.

The original inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin came from reading a pamphlet written by the runaway slave, Josiah Henson, describing the ignominy of a runaway slave's life. When kneeling at communion Stowe conceived the idea of Uncle Tom and soon afterwards, the Fugitive Slave bill persuaded her to put pen to paper. (This controversial bill granted Southerners the right to pursue fugitive slaves into free states and bring them back.)

Harriet gripped a pencil between her teeth whilst kneading dough so that in between times she could write Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

She earned $300 dollars when Uncle Tom was serialized in The National Era beginning June 5, 1851. When it was published in book form on March 20, 1852, Harriet started earning five figure sums.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR & WORTHINGTON edition

Harriet's brother Henry Ward Beecher wrote to his sister about her masterpiece "If you write such another book, I will kill you. It has taken more out of me than a years preaching."

It wasn’t until Stowe made a journey to Europe in 1853 after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin that she realized the length of her new-found fame.

After writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe was bombarded with hate male from the pro slavery south. One package she received contained the bloody ear of a slave pinned to a scrap of cardboard.
In the northern part of USA, Uncle Tom's Cabin did much to stir up anti slavery feelings and hatred for the way of life in the South. The differing reactions to Uncle Tom's Cabin between the North and South helping to polarize the two halves and it was one of the sparks which ignited the Civil War. When Stowe met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he reportedly greeted her, "So this is the little lady who started this big war."

Three million copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold before the start of the American Civil War and twenty years after its publication the book was still selling prodigious amounts. One and a half million pirated copies were sold in Britain alone and it has been translated into over 20 languages.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling American novel of the nineteenth century, until it was surpassed by Lew Wallace's Ben Hur.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was steeped in Biblical values, which reflected the writer's Christian faith. A woman came up to Stowe and asked if she could clasp the hand of the woman who had written the great work. "I did not write it" said the author, "God wrote it, I merely did the dictation."

The American novelist Saul Bellow decided to be a writer after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Treasure Island

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson dashed off his Treasure Island story in 1881 while on holiday in Braemar. He was kept indoors by the damp Scottish weather and started on the story partly to amuse his stepson, Lloyd.

The cunning and opportunistic pirate Long John Silver was based on his friend WE Henley, who was an energetic and talkative man with a wooden leg due to tuberculosis of the foot.

The geography of Monterey, California, where Stevenson spent several months before marrying his wife Fanny, and the nearby island of Fidra inspired the scenery of Treasure Island.

Treasure Island was first published in a children's magazine Young Folks under the title "The Sea Cook". It wasn't published in book form for another couple of years, eventually being made available to the public on November 14, 1883, by Cassell & Co.

The very first edition of Treasure Island.. Wikipedia

Treasure Island was Stevenson's first widely popular novel, and proved to be a huge financial success for him.

The 1950 movie adaptation of Treasure Island became the standard for screen portrayals of historical pirates. The actor Robert Newton, who played Long John Silver, exaggerated his West Country accent and is credited with popularizing the stereotypical "pirate voice." 

Science fiction

The Hellenized Syrian satirist Lucian wrote the novel A True Story, sometimes regarded as the first work of science fiction, in the second century AD. It is the earliest known work of fiction to feature outer space travel, flying to the Moon, alien lifeforms and interplanetary warfare.

Somnium (Latin for "The Dream") is a novel written in 1608, in Latin, by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. It was first published in 1634. The work is a detailed imaginative description of how the Earth might look when viewed from the Moon, and is considered to be the first work of science fiction since Roman times.

Reproduction of 1634 title page

New Atlantis is an incomplete Utopian novel by English writer and statesman Sir Francis Bacon, published posthumously in 1627. The work is a fable about a city on an imaginary Pacific island, Bensalem, ran by scholars. Its advanced population had aircraft, hearing aids, refrigerators and submarines. One of the first ever science fiction novels, it was a best seller for more than a decade after its publication.

The Man in the Moone is a book by the English Church of England bishop Francis Godwin (1562–1633). Initially considered to be one of his early works, it is now thought to date from the late 1620s. The novel was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales.
In The Man in the Moone, a Spaniard ends up on the moon after fleeing Spain and harnessing some wild swans who fly him up to it. He then meets the "Lunars"-a people who inhabit the moon. Some critics consider The Man in the Moone to be one of the first works of science fiction.

The early French science-fiction novel Memoirs of the Year 2500 by Louis-Sébastien Mercier was one of the most popular titles of the 18th century. The first work of utopian fiction set in the future rather than at a distant place in the present , the novel describes the adventures of an unnamed man who falls asleep and wakes up in a Paris several centuries later. Written only 18 years before the French Revolution of 1789, the book describes a future pacifist France with no religion and no military.

The earliest use of the term Science Fiction, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in 1851 when it was applied to poetry or fiction interweaving a story with scientific fact. The earliest use of “science fiction” for futuristic writing was in 1927 and had come into general use by the end of the decade.

The first science fiction film, titled A Trip to the Moon and based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, was released in France  on September 1, 1902.

Luxembourgish-American writer, editor, and magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) provided a forum for the modern genre of science fiction in 1926 by founding the first magazine dedicated to it, Amazing Stories.

February 1928 cover of Amazing Stories

Although Greenback was the first in modern times to use the term "science fiction", he preferred to call it “scientifiction.”

The annual awards at the World Science Fiction Convention are called the “Hugos” after Hugo Gernsback,

The abbreviation “sci-fi” was introduced in 1954, by analogy with “hi-fi."

The first science fiction fanzine, The Comet, was published  in May 1930 by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago, Illinois.

The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century radio show, notable as the first science-fiction program on radio, first hit the airwaves as a 15-minute broadcast on CBS Radio on November 7, 1932. The show related the story of our hero Buck finding himself in the 25th century.

R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a play that was first performed in Czechoslovakia in 1920 and is widely credited with popularizing the term "robot." The play is set in a future world where robots are created to perform manual labor, and it explores the themes of technological progress, the relationship between humans and machines, and the consequences of creating artificial life. 

The BBC aired an adaptation of Karel Čapek's play R.U.R on February 11, 1938. It was the first science fiction television program ever broadcast. The 1938 adaptation by the BBC marked a significant moment in the history of science fiction, as it brought these themes to a wider audience and helped to establish the genre as a staple of popular culture.

The first episode of Doctor Who, titled "An Unearthly Child," aired on November 23, 1963. It was the beginning of a long-running and iconic science fiction television series. The episode introduced viewers to the Doctor, played by William Hartnell, and his time-traveling spaceship, the TARDIS, as well as his companions Susan Foreman, Barbara Wright, and Ian Chesterton. 

The first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast eighty seconds later than the scheduled program time, because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy the previous day.

Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek in the mid-1960s. He sold it as a western, but in space, and modeled it on Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with each episode combining an adventure with a morality tale. The first episode of Star Trek aired on September 8, 1966, and was titled "The Man Trap."

Commander Spock and Captain James T. Kirk pictured here in The Original Series

Enthusiastic Star Trek fans are usually called Trekkies. The word was first used by Arthur W. Saha when he saw people wearing fake Vulcan ears at a convention in 1967.

Dune, by Frank Herbert, the world’s best- selling science fiction novel, was rejected over 20 times before being accepted by a publisher of car manuals.

Science fiction author William Gibson notably coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome," which was published on July 7, 1982.  The word was used in reference to the "mass consensual hallucination" in computer networks. Gibson later popularized the concept in his acclaimed 1984 debut novel Neuromancer.

The front cover art for the book Burning Chrome. Wikipedia Commons

The cyberpunk science-fiction genre was named after the 1983 short story Cyberpunk by Bruce Bethke.

L Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology, was a science fiction author.

In his later years the artist Pablo Picasso liked to read science fiction comics.

National Science Fiction Day is unofficially celebrated by many science fiction fans in the United States on January 2, to correspond with renowned science fiction author Isaac Asimov's birthday. While not an official holiday recognized by the government, it's widely acknowledged by science fiction fans and organizations like the Hallmark Channel and Scholastic Corporation.

Gattaca (1997) was voted the most plausible science fiction film of all time by the scientists at NASA.

Sources Daily Express, Daily Mail

Reading

Reading aloud was the more common practice in antiquity and Saint Augustine remarked that reading silently was unusual in his late 4th century AD work Confessions. The North African bishop commented on Saint Ambrose's unusual habit of reading without speaking.

Miss Auras, by John Lavery, depicts a woman reading a book

Before the Industrial Revolution, in most societies only a small percentage of the population was considered literate. There were a few exceptions where there were generally high literacy rates including classical Athens and the Islamic Caliphate.

During most of the Middle Ages, few people, including kings and emperors, were able to read or write. The clergy were the only ones with these skills.

In 1642, Puritan parents in the Massachusetts Bay Colony had their children taken away from them if they failed to teach them how to read.

Silent reading is actually a recent phenomenon. Only the most skilled readers of the Middle Ages could read silently.

In the 18th century many prominent voices were concerned by an 'epidemic' affecting young people whereby they were spending too much time reading books. It was diagnosed as 'a dangerous disease' called 'reading rage, reading fever, reading mania or reading lust.' What was actually happening was a new phenomenon, the 'love of reading’, due mainly to the growing popularity of a new literary genre: the novel.

John Colby, the brother in law of Daniel Webster, learned to read when he was 84 so that he might read the Bible.

Kim Peek (November 11, 1951 – December 19, 2009) was an American savant. who was the inspiration for the autistic savant character Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man. He could read the both pages of an open book at once, one page with one eye and the other page with the other eye. He memorized the words in the 12,000 books he finished.

Kim peek in 2007. By Dmadeo 

The Rocket eBook was the first commercial e-reader. Produced by NuvoMedia in late 1998; it used a LCD screen and could store up to ten e-books.  The Rocket eBook had a retail price of $499.

Several other e-readers were introduced in the late 1990s, but did not gain widespread acceptance. They on;y took off with the introduction of  the Amazon Kindle, a device which, upon its release in 2007, sold out within five and a half hours.

By Lars Curfs, 

People generally read 25% slower on a computer screen in comparison with a printed page, according to a study.

Quran

The Qur'an is a religious text considered by its Muslim adherents to be the verbatim word of God (Allah). Muslims believe that the verses of the Qur'an were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by God through the archangel Gabriel between 610 AD until the year of his death, twenty two years later.

Mohammed's teachings were recorded or memorized by his secretaries as he spoke them. Shortly after the prophet's death, a number of his companions who knew the Quran by heart were killed in a battle, so the first caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634) decided to collect the book in one volume in order that Mohammed's teachings could be preserved.

By about 650, the third Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (d. 656) began noticing increasing differences in the texts as Islam expanded beyond the Arabian Peninsula into the Middle East and North Africa. Uthman gathered a committee headed by one of Mohammed's old secretaries to collect together the scattered documents. The result was the standard version now known as Uthman's codex, which is generally considered the archetype of the Quran known today.

Birmingham Quran manuscript dated among the oldest in the world.

According to Professor David Thomas of the University of Birmingham, before the final version, collected in book form, was completed in about 650, some of the passages of the Quran were written down on parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels.

The Quran is the size of a New Testament, consisting of 114 chapters called Suras.

According to one estimate the Quran consists of 77,430 words.

Suras are classified as Meccan or Medinan, depending on whether the verses were revealed before or after the migration of Muhammad to the city of Medina.

The tenth Sura of the Quran is named after Jonah, even though only 1 of its 109 verses mentions him.

The term sharia is mentioned only once in the Quran, in the 18th verse of its 45th chapter. A partial translation of the verse reads: "We have ordained for you a sharia to live in line with". Linguistically, the Arabic term sharia means "a straight, smooth path that leads to water", which in the context of Arabian desert culture could also mean "a path to salvation from death". This term later became a technical term for the Islamic law.

Nowhere in the Quran does it say that martyrs get 72 virgins in heaven.

The earliest translation of the Quran into a Western language was Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete (English: Law of Muhammad the pseudo-prophet/false prophet) a translation into Medieval Latin by Robert of Ketton (c. 1110 – 1160 AD). This translation of the Qur'an was completed by 1143 and remained the standard translation for Europeans until the 18th century.

Between August 9, 1537 and August 9, 1538 Venetian printers Paganino and Alessandro Paganini produced the first printed edition of the Qur'an in Arabic. This work was likely intended for export to the Ottoman Empire, with which Venice had extensive trade ties.

Thomas Jefferson had a copy of a 1734 edition Qu'ran in his private library. Historians believe he bought the book while studying law to better understand Islam’s influence on some of the world’s legal systems.

50,000 Qurans are buried in the mountains of Pakistan, each one in a white shroud.

Printer (publishing)

Wooden blocks were first developed for printing in 8th century China and Korea. Whole pages carved on flat wooden blocks were used. Covered with a carbon-based ink, they were pressed onto sheets of paper.

An early 8th-century text containing Buddhist charms called dharani was discovered in the Pulguksa temple of Gyeongju, Korea. They are considered the oldest known printed texts in the world.

Woodblock printing, Sera Monastery, Tibet. By John Hill - Wikipedia

The earliest known printed book is Chinese dating from 868. It is a copy of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, which was produced using carved wooden blocks to print the text on paper.

The second stage was to use separate characters by wood carving or casting. About 1041-48 a Chinese alchemist named Bi Sheng appears to have conceived a method of movable type made of an amalgam of clay and glue hardened by baking. He composed texts by placing the types side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and paper ash. Gently heating this plate and then letting the plate cool solidified the type. Once the impression had been made, the type could be detached by reheating the plate. It would thus appear that Bi Sheng had found an overall solution to the many problems of typography: the manufacture, the assembling, and the recovery of indefinitely reusable type.

This system of moveable type failed to be really successful, because of the structure of the Chinese written language, shared at the time by Korea, which had thousands of characters. Because of this, the method was not significantly better than copying by scribes.

In about 1313 a magistrate named Wang Chen had a craftsman carve more than 60,000 characters on movable wooden blocks so that a treatise on the history of technology could be published.

To Wang Chen is also attributed the invention of horizontal compartmented cases that revolved about a vertical axis to permit easier handling of the type. But Wang Chen's innovation, like that of Pi Sheng, was not followed up in China.

Printing was reinvented in 15th century Europe when Johann Gutenberg, a German goldsmith and printer developed a new revolutionary printing process. The German pioneer's new printing method allowed type to made by pouring molten metal into punch stamped molds, thereby creating a never ending supply of letters. Before, producing type had involved many onerous hours of carving each page as a separate woodcut.

In 1454 Gutenberg used the revolutionary system to print 300 Bibles, of which 48 copies survive, each worth millions of dollars or pounds.

Before Gutenberg started upon his printing press, there were about 30,000 books in Europe.

The black-letter style originated from when printing developed in Germany in the 1450s and therefore became the type face used for the earliest European printed books, such as Gutenberg's Bible. Angular letters of this kind remain the normal convention in German books until the early 20th century.

Early wooden printing press, depicted in 1568.

An early pioneer was Albrecht Pfister, a printer in Bamberg, who published several illustrated books beginning with The Farmer of Bohemia in about 1461.

In 1476 William Caxton (ca. 1415~1422 – 1492) set up a printing press at Westminster.  He is thought to be the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England.

By the end of the 15th century ambitious publications such as the Nuremberg Chronicle (a 1493 history of the world) had page layouts as elaborate as any modern magazine.

In 1584 Antonio Ricardo became the first printer in South America with the publication of the Doctrina Christiana, a book in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara.

Robert Barker, the King's Printer, made the first printing of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible on May 2, 1611.

The royal printers in London were stripped of their licence and fined £300 (about £40,000 $55,000 in today’s money) by Charles I after their 1631 reprint of the King James Bible listed the seventh commandment as "Thou shalt commit adultery". The majority of copies of what became known as the Sinners’ Bible or Wicked Bible were immediately burned

The typographical error

In the early days of printing, capital letters were kept in the upper compartments of the type case, while the smaller letters were placed below for easier access. This is where “uppercase” and “lowercase” came from. 

In the 1700s, a "stereotype" was a plaster-cast copy of a block of typeset letters, that printers could use to reprint unchanged text (for example books) without having to re-set the type from scratch. In the 1800s, the term came to mean "an image perpetuated without change."

At the age of 12 Benjamin Franklin became an apprentice to his stepbrother James, a printer, who taught him the printing trade.

Franklin later worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop in what is now the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London.

In 1813, a British manufacturer of printing presses, Harrild & Sons, helped establish the use in London of composition rollers instead of ink balls to ink the printing plates.

Samuel Rust of New York City patented the first practical printing press built in the U.S. in 1832.

George Baxter (1804–1867) was an English artist and printer based in London. He is credited with the invention of commercially viable color printing. In 1835 Baxter was granted Patent No. 6916 – Improvements in Producing Coloured Steel Plate, Copper Plate and other Impressions, which outlined the combined intaglio and relief process he would continue to use for the next thirty years.

George Baxter's view of the New York Crystal Palace published in 1853

Despite his technical excellence and the general popularity of his prints, Baxter’s business was never profitable – his process was laborious and it seems likely that his perfectionism prevented him from completing many of his commissioned works on time.

Wood type for printing was invented in China, first mass-produced in the United States a thousand years later, and later exported back to China for use by missionaries.

 Upper case and lower case letters are named after the specific cases that printers would keep the letters in, with the lower case being easier for them to access.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, History World

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice was first written at Steventon Rectory when Jane Austen was 21-years-old and originally titled First Impressions. In 1797, her father sent the manuscript to the publisher Thomas Cadell. In response, Cadell scrawled “Declined by Return of Post” on the letter and sent it back with insulting speed.

Watercolour-and-pencil portrait of Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra

After the publisher's rejection the novel languished for 14 years.

Flush with the success of Sense and Sensibility, which was well on its way to selling out its first print run of 750 copies, Austen revised the manuscript in 1812.

The title change is thought to have happened because by the time Austen revised her manuscript there were two other works with the same  name out by Margaret Holford and Horace Smith respectively.

Austin sold the full rights to Pride and Prejudice to Thomas Egerton, the publisher of Sense and Sensibility for £110, having asked for £150.

Pride and Prejudice was published on January 28, 1813 when Austen was 37 years old.

Title page from the first edition of the first volume of Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen didn’t put her name on her novels. The title page of Pride and Prejudice said, “by the author of Sense and Sensibility.” It wasn’t until after Austen's death in 1817 that her brother revealed her name to the public.

Pride and Prejudice was advertised in the Morning Chronicle, priced at 18s. Favorable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in November 1813.

In the first two editions alone published in 1814, Egerton profited £450. Since then, Pride and Prejudice has sold approximately 20 million copies.

Charlotte Brontë, in a letter to the critic George Henry Lewes, wrote that Pride and Prejudice was a disappointment, "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck".

There have been at least 11 film and TV versions of the book. The six-episode 1995 BBC British television adaption of Pride and Prejudice was critically acclaimed and a popular success, Pride and Prejudice was honored with several awards, including an Emmy for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Costume Design for a Miniseries or a Special".

The role of Mr Darcy in the BBC series elevated Colin Firth to stardom. Although it's the role that made him famous, Colin Firth almost passed on playing Mr. Darcy—he knew very little about Pride and Prejudice.

Source Mental Floss

The Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan was a Reformed Baptist, who had been committed to Bedford county gaol for preaching without a licence. This was the post Cromwell era when dissenters were clamped down and only ministers of the Church of England were allowed to preach.

Bunyan was freed in 1672 after spending 12 years in prison, only to be jailed again for six months in 1675. It was during his second spell in jail that Bunyan started writing The Pilgrim's Progress. An allegory based on the author's own spiritual life, his many years in Bedford jail had given him time to read and reread the Bible and formulate this spiritual classic.

Title page of Pilgrim's Progress Date: 1678 

The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory about a man called Christian, who goes on a journey, through the English county of Bedfordshire, to London. Christian is an 'everyman' character: he represents the reader or any ordinary person. Eventually he gets to the Celestial City.

The book was loosely based on Bunyan's own journey between Bedford and Luton. The Barton Hills near Streatley, Bedfordshire was the inspiration for the "Delectable Mountains," Houghton Abbey" (now in ruins). in Amptill was the inspiration for "House Beautiful."  The steep slope leading into Ampthill was the model for the 'Hill of Difficulty'.

Later, the "Land of Beulah" is Middlesex County, the "Very Deep River" is the Thames, and the "Celestial City" is London.

A Plan of the Road From the City of Destruction to the Celestial City,( 1821)

The narrative itself is larded with biblical quotations. In the margins John Bunyan cited his scripture references.

Pilgrim's Progress is divided into two parts, and is 108,260 words long. Each part is a continuous narrative, with no chapter divisions.

When the first part was published on February 18, 1678, it immediately became extremely popular and made Bunyan famous.

Its full title was The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream.

Part Two was published in 1684. There were 11 editions of the first part during John Bunyan’s lifetime, and two editions of the second part.

Rich in allegory, many phrases from the book have come into common use. We often talk of a 'Slough of Despond' ("One has one's own Slough of Despond to trudge through.). The expressions 'Vanity Fair' and 'House Beautiful' are also quite familiar.

The book includes a poem which became the popular hymn "He Who Would Valiant Be."

For the next 150 years after its publication The Pilgrim's Progress, like the Bible, were found in every English home. It has since been published in over 200 languages.

African version of Pilgrim's Progress from 1902

Even, the Chinese Communist government printed The Pilgrim's Progress and the 200,000 copies sold out in China within three days.

Pickwick Papers

The first edition of Charles Dickens' debut novel, Pickwick Papers appeared on March 31, 1836.

The 24 year old Dickens married Kate Hogarth at St Luke's church, Chelsea two days after the first monthly edition of Pickwick Papers appeared.

Dickens received 14 guineas for each monthly installment of Pickwick Papers. It only took off when he introduced the character of Sam Weller.

The illustrator Phiz became almost as famous as Dickens for his comic illustrations to The Pickwick Papers and other novels.

Pickwick Papers was the first novel to attempt a rendering of street talk. Not very accurately. For instance Sam Weller's indiscriminate swapping of "w" for "v" was not very realistic.