Susan Cooper and Lewis Carroll

Once again, our super trivia buffs identified both authors from last week.

48. Our first author grew up in Britain, where she began writing imaginative books that incorporate many autobiographical details. She moved to the United States when she married her first husband, a professor at MIT. She continued to write newspaper articles, screenplays, and books for adults as well as award-winning books for children. The last book in her series, The Grey King, was a Newbery Medal winner. She also sometimes wrote with an famous actor who would eventually become her second husband.

Susan Cooper is probably best known for her The Dark is Rising series, which are woven around British myths and legends. Those resulted in The Seeker movie. She is also known for marrying Hume Cronyn after his first wife, Jessica Tandy, passed away.

People might not be quite so familiar with her lovely picture books, including, Matthew’s Dragon, Tam Lin, Danny and the Kings, Frog, and The Magician’s Boy.

This video biography is a nice summary:

Some of Susan Cooper’s books:

49. Now here’s some real trivia. This famous author from the 1800’s was actually a mathematician by training. He used a pseudonym for his children’s books. His real name was Charles Dodgson. Do you know what his pseudonym was?

We all know Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, etc. His real name, however, was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

Many of Lewis Carroll’s books are now in the public domain and readily available electronically on the Internet, such as at Literature.org, which has online versions, or Project Gutenberg (do a search), which also offers e-book versions.

Versions are also still in print, too.