Portal:Literature/Did you know/Week 38

... that Toni Morrison, Elena Castedo and A. L. Kennedy have all written novels titled Paradise?

... that "Death of the Author" is an influential 1968 essay by Roland Barthes in which he maintains that the reader must separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate it from interpretive tyranny?

... that the British Museum Reading Room used to be the main reading room of the British Library (pictured) until the library moved to St Pancras in 1997?

... that Shockheaded Peter is a musical entertainment based on 19th century German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann's children's book, Der Struwwelpeter (1845)?

... that, with the exception of A House and Its Head, Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels have been out of print for some time?

... that "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" is the first line of Philip Larkin's short poem "This Be The Verse"?

... that Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton has written a play about Oscar Wilde, Saint Oscar?