Portal:Literature/Did you know/Week 2

... that Jean le Rond d'Alembert, André Le Breton, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Denis Diderot, Baron d'Holbach, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire were among the contributors to the 35 volume Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (pictured)?

... that Liza of Lambeth was W. Somerset Maugham's debut novel?

... that Titania is the queen of the fairies in William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream?

... that "The Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States at the time of its publication; that the phrase derives from the title of an essay by John William DeForest published in 1869; and that William Carlos Williams, Clyde Brion Davis, and Philip Roth have actually written novels entitled The Great American Novel?

... that "Ars longa, vita brevis" is part of an aphorism by Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and that it refers to the art of medicine?

... that both Truffaut's La Sirène du Mississippi (1969) and Michael Cristofer's Original Sin (2001) are based on Cornell Woolrich's 1947 novel, Waltz into Darkness, a historical novel set in turn-of-the-century New Orleans?

... that Racing Demon is a 1990 play by David Hare about the Church of England?