Famous Author Assignment:

MLA Format/Typed

For TEN of the authors we discussed, please complete the following:

1. Name2. Time Period for his/her writing3. Where did he live? Is that important? Why/Why not?4. WHY is he/she famous? Use FACTS5. Suggestions for writing (two or three each)6. Personal Impression/Comments (two or three each)

Famous Literary Characters and Their Real-Life InspirationsBy Emily Temple on Nov 13, 2011

Alice — Alice LiddellFamously, Alice Liddell was the inspiration and namesake for Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic Alice in Wonderland. Carroll, then known as Charles Dodgson, was close with the Liddell family (he took the photo of Alice above), and when 10-year-old Alice begged for a story, Dodgson began to spin his famous tale of Alice and what happened after she fell through the rabbit hole. Unlike previous stories he had told her, she asked him to write it down. The rest, as they say, is history.

Famous Literary Characters and Their Real-Life InspirationsBy Emily Temple on Nov 13, 2011

Moby Dick — Mocha DickMocha Dick was an albino sperm whale who lived in the early 19th century, so-named because he tended to frequent the balmy waters near the island of Mocha, off southern Chile. Of him, explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds wrote, “This renowned monster, who had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers, was an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength. From the effect of age, or more probably from a freak of nature… a singular consequence had resulted – he was white as wool!” Needless to say, Melville drew on the notoriety of Mocha Dick as well as his own seafaring experiences for his classic novel.

Famous Literary Characters and Their Real-Life InspirationsBy Emily Temple on Nov 13, 2011

Molly Bloom — Nora BarnacleThe wife of main character Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, Molly Bloom corresponds in many ways to Penelope from the Odyssey, but was also modelled off of Joyce’s own wife, Nora Barnacle. In fact, the novel, which takes place in a single day, is set on June 16, 1904, the occasion of their first date. Let’s say it together: aww.

Famous Literary Characters and Their Real-Life InspirationsBy Emily Temple on Nov 13, 2011

Long John Silver — William Ernest HenleyWhen Robert Louis Stevenson was trying to come up with a good villain for Treasure Island, he was inspired by his friend, William Ernest Henley, an English poet, critic and editor, a jovial fellow who had had his left leg amputated from the knee after a childhood bout of tuberculosis. After the publication of Treasure Island, Stevenson wrote to his friend: “I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John Silver…the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you.”

10 Famous Literary Characters and Their Real-Life InspirationsBy Emily Temple on Nov 13, 2011

Severus Snape – John NettleshipWhen Rowling admitted that Snape was “loosely based on a teacher I myself had,” the press tracked down John Nettleship, who taught Rowling Chemistry at Wyedean School near Chepstow. When first approached, he was surprised, explaining, “I was horrified when I first found out. I knew I was a strict teacher but I didn’t think I was that bad.” In retrospect, however, he admitted that he was “a short-tempered chemistry teacher with long hair…[and a] gloomy, malodorous laboratory,” which seems pretty on-point to us.

Famous Literary Characters and Their Real-Life InspirationsBy Emily Temple on Nov 13, 2011

Charles Baker “Dill” Harris — Truman CapoteHarper Lee based Jem and Scout’s best friend and summer neighbor Dill on her own childhood friend, Truman Capote. As he once said, “Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Harper Lee’s mother and father, lived very near. Harper Lee was my best friend. Did you ever read her book, To Kill a Mockingbird? I’m a character in that book, which takes place in the same small town in Alabama where we lived. Her father was a lawyer, and she and I used to go to trials all the time as children. We went to the trials instead of going to the movies.”

10 Famous Literary Characters and Their Real-Life InspirationsBy Emily Temple on Nov 13, 2011

Ebenezer Scrooge – John Elwes

Evidence suggests that Charles Dickens based legendary miser Ebenezer Scrooge on the 18th century politician John Elwes, who had inherited a fortune but was loath to spend a single penny, preferring to live as if in poverty, squatting in empty apartments. Whether he went around muttering ‘bah humbug,’ we really can’t say.

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

Peter Pan — Michael Llewelyn DaviesThough J.M. Barrie undoubtably based all of his children — the Lost Boys, the Darlings — on the Davies family, with whom he became friends in 1897, it was Michael who was the inspiration for Peter himself. Michael was an infant at the same time Barrie was writing about the infant Peter, and over the years (and books) Barrie incorporated some of Michael’s characteristics, like his nightmares, into Peter’s character. Later on in life, Michael’s brother Nico described him as “the cleverest of us, the most original, the potential genius.” That sounds like our Peter.

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

By Emily Temple on Sep 30, 2012

Daisy Buchanan – Ginevra KingThe Great Gatsby‘s Daisy is generally considered to be a thinly veiled portrait of Fitzgerald’s first love, Ginevra King, whom he dated from 1915 to 1917 (and who we think totally looks like Mary Crowley). It was smack in the midst of their relationship, which faltered because of the difference in their social standings, that Fitzgerald wrote miserably that ”Poor boys shouldn’t think of marrying rich girls,” a phrase that was used in the movie adaptation. King was also the inspiration for a few more of Fitzgerald’s characters, including Judy Jones in “Winter Dreams” and Isabelle Borge in This Side of Paradise. We can’t imagine Zelda liking all this very much.

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

By Emily Temple on Sep 30, 2012

Sherlock Holmes — Dr. Joseph BellArthur Conan Doyle said that Sherlock Holmes was based on Dr. Joseph Bell, who was one of Conan Doyle’s teachers in medical school. In his autobiography, the author wrote, “I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer an exact science.” In an 1892 letter to Bell, Conan Doyle wrote: “I do not think that [Holmes’s] analytical work is in the least an exaggeration of some effects which I have seen you produce in the out-patient ward. Round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate, I have tried to build up a man who pushed the thing as far as it would go—further occasionally.” Bell was flattered to be sure, but not above sending this chiding missive to his friend – ”you are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it.”

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

By Emily Temple on Sep 30, 2012

Lolita and Humbert Humbert — Sally Horner and Frank LaSalleThough it’d be a stretch to say Dolores Haze was fully based on Sally Horner, according to Nabokov’s biographer Brian Boyd, the author studied the case while working on Lolita. He writes that Nabokov “noted newspaper reports of accidents, sex crimes and killings: “a middle-aged morals offender” who abducted fifteen-year-old Sally Horner from New Jersey and kept her for twenty-one months as his “cross-country slave,” until she was found in a southern California motel…” posing as her father just as H.H. did. Humbert even refers to the case in the book, wondering “Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?”. Basically, Hum. Basically.

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

By Emily Temple on Sep 30, 2012

Winnie the Pooh (and gang) — Winnie the Pooh (and gang)We all know that Winnie the Pooh was based on A.A. Milne’s son Christopher Robin’s teddy of the same name, and likewise many of the other characters. But did you know that the original Winnie was named after a real bear? Winnipeg was a friendly and very playful female black bear who lived at London Zoo from 1915 until 1934. She had many admirers, including Christopher Robin, who renamed his own teddy bear from “Edward Bear” to “Winnie the Pooh” in honor of Winnipeg.

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

By Emily Temple on Sep 30, 2012

Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty – Jack Kerouac and Neal CassadyOn the Road may be a standby of American literature, but Kerouac was just “scribbling” about himself and his friends living the good life. In fact, almost every single character in the novel corresponds to a real person in Kerouac’s life — if he’d had his way, he would have just used everybody’s real names.

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

By Emily Temple on Sep 30, 2012

Anne Shirley — Evelyn NesbitThe connection between the sprightly protagonist of Anne of Green Gablesand Gibson Girl Evelyn Nesbit is a purely superficial one: when Lucy Maud Montgomery was imagining the character, she cut out a picture of the model from Metropolitan Magazine (with no idea who she was) and pasted it to the wall of her bedroom as the ideal physical appearance of Anne. This is who you’re supposed to be imagining, girls.

Famed Literary Figures Based on Real-Life People By Jeanie Riess

Smithsonian.com, September 13, 2012 

Writers are often told to write what they know, so it should come as no surprise that many of

the most famous characters in literary history are based on real people. Whether drawing

inspiration from their spouses, friends and family, or finally, after decades worth of work,

inserting themselves into the text, authors pull nearly every word and sentence from some

element of reality, and most often, that element is people. Many characters, like Dean Moriarty

in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (based on real-life beatnik Neal Cassady), come to mind as

obvious, but this list is for the real-life literary characters that do not get recognized enough,

and who deserve as much credit as their fictional counterparts.

1. Prospero (The Tempest, 1611)/William ShakespeareConsidered Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest is the artist’s farewell to the theater. Prospero

is the island’s great magician, and with his powers he controls the tortoise-like character of

Caliban and the sprite, spry Ariel. Prospero’s magic is in his books, and he decides when the

Tempest should arrive, and who should come along with it. Sounds an awful lot like a

playwright, doesn’t it? Prospero writes the script and wonders, like Shakespeare

understandably would, what the future will be without him and his power. With frequent

allusions to “the Globe” (the world, but also the name of Shakespeare’s theater), it is difficult to

miss Prospero’s likeness to his great creator. Shakespeare critic and scholar Stephen Greenblatt

says that the play brings up all of the “issues that haunted Shakespeare’s imagination

throughout his career.” By writing himself into his final play, Shakespeare reminded the world

of his own immortality as a public literary figure

2. Robinson Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe, 1719)/Alexander SelkirkThe real Robinson Crusoe, whose memoir Daniel Defoe adapted for his own novel, was the

original “bad seed” of the modern nuclear family. After his brother forced him to drink

seawater, Selkirk started a fight, and was summoned by the Kirk Session in Scotland to explain

himself. Fearing he would not be granted clemency, Selkirk ran away to the sea and fought

against the Spanish as a privateer. A brilliant navigator, Selkirk was eventually made sailing

master. The captain of his ship, however, was a tyrant, and after many close calls with the

Spanish, Selkirk feared that the ship would sink and decided to call it quits, demanding to be

dropped off at the nearest piece of land. Unfortunately for Selkirk (but fortunately for Defoe),

the nearest piece of land was the desert island 400 miles off the coast of Chile called Más a

Tierra, and now referred to as Robinson Crusoe Island. After four years and four months with

nothing but a musket, a Bible, a few articles of clothing and some tobacco, Selkirk was rescued.

It turns out he was right to have fled his troubled ship; it sunk shortly after he abandoned it,

with only one survivor. Selkirk made a fortune privateering before eventually returning home to

England, dressed in silk and lace, but he could never get used to land and yearned for the open

sea. He published a memoir of his adventures, but died on a privateering mission before he

could read Defoe’s adaption of his little-noticed book.

3. Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890)/ John GrayA member of Oscar Wilde’s lively literary circle, John Gray was a lovely, boyish poet who could

pass for a 15-year-old at age 25. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde describes the youth as a

“young Adonis,” and judging by a black-and-white photo of John Gray, we can only suggest that

he was not far off. Wilde met Gray in London at the home of a fellow artist, and, for a while was

one of the author's many romantic affairs. The similarities between Gray the character and Gray

the poet were striking. Like Dorian, John Gray found himself easily corrupted by the city and the

title character’s first name came from an ancient Greek tribe, the Dorians, who were famous for

perpetuating love among men. After the publication of The Picture of Dorian Graypeople began

to call John Gray Dorian, which made him so uncomfortable that he went so far as to sue a

London publication for libel for making the association. The fate of this real-life hero was more

dramatic than Wilde could have ever written: John Gray moved to Rome and studied for the

priesthood.

4. Antonia (My Ántonia, 1918)/ Annie Sadilek Pavelka“Every story I have ever written,” said Willa Cather “… has been the recollection of some

childhood experience, of something that touched me as a

youngster.” My Ántonia, Cather's bildungsroman masterpiece, embodies that sentiment,

detailing a young boy’s relationship with Bohemian immigrant Antonia Shimerdas and her

acclimation to life on the western plains of the United States. Like her narrator in My

Ántonia, Jim Burden, Willa Cather was born in Virginia. Then, like Jim Burden, at age 9 she

moved with her family to the untamed plains of Red Cloud, Nebraska. In Red Cloud, Cather

became friends with Annie Pavelka, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants recently

transplanted there. Many years after leaving, Cather returned to Red Cloud and renewed her

friendship with Annie in 1916. She published My Ántonia just two years later. Of her childhood

acquaintance, Cather said, “One of the truest artists I ever knew in the keenness and

sensitiveness of her enjoyment, in her love of people and in her willingness to take pains.”

5. Molly Bloom (Ulysses, 1922)/Nora BarnacleWhen asked if she was, in fact, the inspiration for the character of Molly Bloom in James

Joyce’s Ulysses, Nora Barnacle, Joyce’s first wife, answered simply, “No. She was much fatter.”

Joyce eyed the tall brunette in the street one afternoon, and set all of Ulysses to take place on

the same date as his first date with Nora. Molly Bloom is a sensual, unfaithful woman in the

novel, a part that Nora pretended to play more than she actually carried out. She and Joyce

wrote intensely longing letters to one another when they were apart, and often she mentioned

the attractions of various other men, though she never indulged in them. Joyce stuck to

Barnacle, writing one of his most memorable characters after her, although his father warned

him that the opposite would happen, given his daughter-in-law’s extraordinary name.

6. Emily Grierson (A Rose for Emily, 1930)/ Maud FaulknerAlthough “Miss Maud” Faulkner did not dress and primp the corpse of her deceased betrothed

from day to day, it is quite clear that William Faulkner’s mother did share much common

ground with Miss Emily, the protagonist of the author’s eerie A Rose for Emily. The story is

based on a young girl who, in Faulkner’s words, “just wanted to be loved and to love and to

have a husband and a family.” Besides these aspirations, however, Miss Emily took after Miss

Maud in an even more compelling way: As an artist. Emily’s living room displays a crayon

portrait of her father, just as Maud’s home displayed original portraits of family members, both

living and deceased. Miss Maud fancied herself a realist, and Miss Emily could be called that

(preserving a dead body does seem like a facet of realism, after all). In New Albany, Mississippi,

William Faulkner’s birthplace, Miss Maud was considered standoffish and guarded by the

neighbors, just as Emily is spoken of by the close-knit, gossip-ridden fictional town of Jefferson.

7. Willie Stark (All the King's Men, 1946)/ Huey P. LongHuey P. Long, Louisiana governor and senator, famously declared after the gunshot that fatally

wounded him, “Lord don’t let me die. I have too much left to do.” Whether he meant shaking

Ramos gin fizzes or securing the future for the everyman, Robert Penn Warren was impressed.

The author based his masterpiece on Long, also known as “The Kingfish.” Willie Stark may now

be one of the most famous characters in American literary history, but his many eccentricities

will never outshine the legacy of his real-life counterpart. Long could not live without that

favorite cocktail and, taxpayers be damned, he flew the top bartender from the New Orleans

Hotel Roosevelt wherever he went so that he would have the drink on hand at any moment.

Willie Stark may be a bit less formal, but the sentiment is the same: Political corruption and

unnecessary government spending are fine as long as you’re a man of the people.

8 & 9. Dill Harris (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960/ Truman Capote and Idabel Tompkins (Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1948)/ Harper Lee"I’m Charles Baker Harris. I can read. I can read anything you’ve got.” Dill Harris’s introduction

in To Kill a Mockingbird is true to the character of his real-life inspiration, Truman Capote, who

taught himself to read when he was just 5 years old. Capote, who lived next door to Harper Lee

in Monroeville, Alabama, and was her best childhood friend, first put Lee into two of his own

novels before becoming the inspiration for Dill Harris, Scout’s precocious, wise-beyond-his-

years best friend and neighbor. Capote’s most notable Lee stand-in was Idabel Tompkins

in Other Voices, Other Rooms. We can only guess that Lee the tomboy lived up to her Idabel’s

crackling dialogue: “Son,” she said, and spit between her fingers, “what you’ve got in your

britches is no news to me, and no concern of mine: Hell, I’ve fooled around with nobody but

boys since first grade. I never think like I’m a girl; you’ve got to remember that, or we can’t

never be friends.”

10. Gary Lambert (The Corrections, 2001)/Bob FranzenBefore Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections was published, the author called his brother, Bob, to

give him fair warning: “You might hate the book,” he said. “You might hate me.” Bob Franzen,

with the unconditional love of any good big brother, responded, “Hating you is not an

option.” Any writer with good sense would have been wise to warn him; Gary Lambert, whose

character is based on Jonathan Franzen’s brother, is the only character in the book who never

seems to learn anything. He is money-crazed and insensitive, with all the arrogance of the

oldest family member and little of that position’s requisite compassion.