Mental Floss

AUTHORS

How many have you read?

Whether they’re iconic horror novels or classic kids’ lit, these books still resonate five decades after they first hit shelves.

Lorna Wallace














There are a lot of people who don’t think Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare.

Discover the controversial conspiracy theories that challenge Shakespeare’s authorship, from the Baconian Theory to the Alien Theory and beyond.

Lorna Wallace


Plagiarism is a bad idea in any setting, but some of history’s most vaunted writers have been caught stealing.

Floss books








Victor Hugo, Anne Rice, and Thomas Hardy were all believers.

Some, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Victor Hugo, believed they had communicated with spirits directly; others, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Hardy, had ghostly encounters they couldn’t explain.

Lorna Wallace