Fascinating and Extraordinary Interests of Famous Authors

1. Agatha Christie: Archaeologist

British murder-mystery writer Agatha Christie has a very adventurous life. He married the famous archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930. He accompanied Mallowan while traveling in the Middle East and assisted him in his archaeological excavations. It has inspired some of these experiences: Dating with Death, Murder in Mesopotamia, Murder on the Orient Express, Death Comes Finally. In his book “Come, Tell Me How You Live”, he described his experiences of archaeological excavations in Syria and shared photographs he took to document his travels.

2. Victor Hugo: Painter

Known for the Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, French writer Victor Hugo is a talented artist who drew over 4,000 drawings in his lifetime. At first, Hugo treated painting as if it was just a fun, but eventually took it more seriously and his paintings were praised by the leading artists of his age. He shared them privately because he feared that his paintings would overshadow his literary achievements. Many other famous writers have shared Hugo’s love of drawing. The American poet E. E. Cummings painted every day, creating an accumulation of approximately 1,600 sketches, drawings, watercolors and oil paintings. Other authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter and William Makepeace Thackery have also illustrated their work.

3.Sylvia Plath: Bee Keeper

In 1962, the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes (also a successful writer) decided to become a beekeeper. Plath’s father, Otto, is an entomologist specializing in bees. Plath wrote in a letter to her mother in June, “Today, guess what, we’ve been beekeepers! We went to the local meeting last week… We all put on masks and were excited… Mr Pollard ensured that we have an old hive for what we painted white and green, and today he brought a swarm of docile Italian hybrids we ordered and placed them… I feel very ignorant, but to read and learn I will try to do my best for it. ” he said. Shortly before his tragic death, Plath wrote five series of poems about bees, inspired by his experiences in beekeeping.

4.Emily Dickinson: The baker

Emily Dickinson, another American poet, loved spending time in the kitchen. The successful baker won second place at the Amherst Cattle Show in 1856 with round Indian and Rye bread. Dickinson enjoyed serving bread to his family and friends, and even dropped the cake basket from his window to the neighborhood kids on the street below. She has scribbled poems on recipes and food packages.

5. Leo Tolstoy: Chess Player

Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, best known for his epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, is also an avid chess player. As a young boy he learned how to play and carefully recorded most of his games. “There was no book knowledge about him, but he played a lot, was awake and creative,” biographer Aylmer Maude, with whom he often played chess, told Tolstoy. he said.

6.Ernest Hemingway: The Nature Man

Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway loved spending time outside, hunting and fishing. He has gone on several African safaris and is also a successful sea fisherman in the Caribbean. In 1935, it caught the largest swordfish ever caught. His adventures have inspired many of his books and short stories. It is said that Hemingway once said “To write about life, you must live it first.”

7.Jack Kerouac: Fictional Gamer

American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac invented various fictional sports when he was young. He continued to play the fictional game of baseball even as an adult, with a notebook full of detailed statistics and analysis. Kerouac himself is a talented athlete. He played football while studying at Columbia University and wrote sports articles for the student newspaper.

8. Mark Twain: Inventor

American writer Mark Twain, who was friends with Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison (even starred in one of Edison’s movies), also did his best to invent something. Three of his inventions have been patented: an elastic hook clasp, a scrapbook with self-adhesive pages, and an educational game called the “memory generator”. This invention has been especially successful, with over 25,000 sold.

9. J. R. R. Tolkien: The Artificial Language Enthusiast

Author of beloved fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, J.R. R. Tolkien is a brilliant philologist who speaks many languages and taught Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. He started speaking at a young age and this passion continued throughout his life. In 1916, he wrote a letter to his future wife, Edith, about the “meaningless fairy language” he was working on and its development. He finished the Middle Earth Mythology that he created thanks to this hobby. Speaking as a “Secret Helper” in his speech in 1930, Tolkien said, “Making language and mythology are interrelated functions. Our language structure will give birth to a mythology. ”He said.

10. Beatrix Potter: The Mushroom Expert

Famous for his children’s stories and beautiful watercolor paintings, British writer Beatrix Potter was also interested in natural sciences, especially botany. She developed a theory for the germination of fungi and was one of the first in the world to understand the symbiotic relationship between algae and fungi in England. Unfortunately, she is a woman, and because she lacked a formal scientific education, many scientific communities refused to take her work seriously. His research was fully appreciated after his death. Potter donated his detailed scientific drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library. Mycologists use these drawings today to identify fungi.