109 Fun Facts About Reading

How many raised dots make up a full braille cell?

Six dots, in two columns of three, give 64 combinations counting the blank cell; Braille shrank an earlier twelve-dot code so that a single fingertip could feel a whole character at once.

Louis Braille was blinded at three by which tool in his father's workshop?

An awl slipped as three-year-old Louis tried to punch holes in leather like his father, a harness maker; infection spread to both eyes, and by five he was completely blind.

Braille's code was an improvement on 'night writing', a tactile system invented by whom?

Charles Barbier's raised-dot 'night writing' coded sounds rather than letters, in cells of up to twelve dots; Braille's fix was a cell small enough to read with one touch of a fingertip.

What French term did Émile Javal apply to the short, rapid jumps the eyes make while reading?

Saccades, French for 'jerks', was the word Émile Javal used from 1879 for the rapid jumps between fixations; he saw that the eyes do not glide along a line of text but hop and pause.

In his Confessions, Saint Augustine recalls watching which bishop of Milan read silently instead of aloud?

Ambrose read with his eyes while 'his voice and tongue were silent', Augustine wrote; the passage is often cited as proof that ancient readers normally read aloud, though scholars now doubt silent reading was rare.

Which teacher is credited with coining 'speed reading' and launched Reading Dynamics in Washington, D.C. in 1959?

Evelyn Wood, a Utah teacher, opened her first Reading Dynamics institute in 1959 and taught students to pace their eyes with a hand swept down the page; the term 'speed reading' is credited to her.

About how many words a minute does the average adult read silently in English?

About 240 words a minute is what a 2019 review of 190 studies found: 238 for English non-fiction and 260 for fiction, lower than the figures usually quoted, while reading aloud averaged just 183.

What is the name for loss of the ability to read after brain injury?

Alexia is reading lost to brain damage, most often a stroke; in the 'pure' form that Jules Dejerine described, patients can still write sentences but can no longer read them.

What material did Bi Sheng use to make the first known movable type, around 1040?

Baked clay is what Shen Kuo's account describes: Bi Sheng cut each character into sticky clay, fired it hard, and set the pieces on an iron plate coated with resin, wax and paper ash.

In which city did Johannes Gutenberg print his Bible in the 1450s?

Mainz is where Gutenberg printed his Bible around 1454–55; his backer Johann Fust then sued to recover 1,600 guilders in loans, won, and went on printing with Peter Schöffer, who had worked in Gutenberg's shop.

How many lines per page give the Gutenberg Bible its other name?

It is called the 42-line Bible because its columns of type run to 42 lines, which tells it apart from the 36-line Bible printed a few years later, probably in Bamberg.

Which Buddhist text, printed on 11 May 868, is considered the oldest dated printed book?

The Diamond Sutra scroll, a Chinese translation bearing the date 11 May 868, was found in the Dunhuang caves in 1900 by the Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu and bought by Aurel Stein in 1907; it is in the British Library.

What is the name for the paged book format that gradually replaced the scroll in the ancient world?

The codex, pages bound along one edge, takes its name from Latin caudex, a tree trunk or wooden block; it could be opened at any point and written on both sides, and early Christians adopted it widely.

Before paper, book pages were typically parchment or vellum, made from what?

Parchment and vellum are animal hides — sheep, goat or calf skin — soaked in lime, scraped and stretched; vellum strictly means calfskin, and the word parchment comes from Pergamon in Asia Minor.

The first Penguin paperbacks of 1935 were sold through Woolworths for what price?

Sixpence was all an early Penguin cost; the story goes that Allen Lane had the idea in 1934 after finding nothing worth reading at the Exeter St Davids bookstall on his way back from visiting Agatha Christie.

Which German publisher's colour-coded paperback covers did Penguin copy in 1935?

Albatross Books of Hamburg supplied the template: Allen Lane borrowed its standard size, lettering-only covers and colour coding by genre, and later hired Albatross co-founder Kurt Enoch to run Penguin in America.

Melvil Dewey worked out his decimal classification in 1873 while working in the library of which Massachusetts college?

Amherst College is where Dewey devised the scheme as a student, tried it out on the library's own books, and published it in 1876 as a slim pamphlet; it now fills several volumes.

Whose 6,487 books did Congress buy to rebuild its library after the British burned Washington in 1814?

Thomas Jefferson sold Congress his 6,487 volumes in 1815 for $23,950; a fire in 1851 destroyed about two-thirds of them, and the library's main building, opened in 1897, carries his name.

The Bodleian Library, founded in 1602, is the main research library of which university?

The Bodleian is the University of Oxford's main research library; Sir Thomas Bodley refounded it in 1602, half a century after the earlier library had been stripped of its books and even its shelves.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels studied together in 1845 at Chetham's Library, founded in 1653, in which English city?

Manchester's Chetham's Library is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world; in 1870 Engels wrote to Marx that he had again been sitting at the alcove desk they once shared and was 'very fond of the place'.

The first modern tax-supported public library, opened in 1833, was in which small New Hampshire town?

Peterborough, New Hampshire, voted in 1833 to fund a town library from tax money, a first for the United States; Boston's public library was authorised in 1848, and Andrew Carnegie later paid for 1,689 American libraries.

Which Roman is said to have accidentally burned part of the Library of Alexandria during his civil war in 48 BC?

Julius Caesar, besieged in Alexandria, set fire to ships in the harbour; ancient writers say the blaze spread ashore and destroyed part of the library's collection, though the library was still in use long afterwards.

The Book of Kells, an illuminated Gospel book from around 800 AD, is on display at which institution?

Trinity College Dublin was given the Book of Kells in 1661 and shows it in its Old Library; monks of St Columba's order made it, perhaps partly on Iona, before Viking raids drove them to Kells.

Which abbreviation names the 13-digit code that identifies each edition of a published book?

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number; the codes had ten digits until the end of 2006 and 13 from 2007, so that they fit the EAN barcode system used on other retail goods.

Which display technology have Kindle e-readers used since the first model of 2007?

E Ink moves charged black and white pigments inside tiny capsules and can hold a page on screen with no power at all, which is why it reads like paper and uses so little battery.

Which actress launched a book club in 2017 whose picks include Where the Crawdads Sing?

Reese Witherspoon picked Delia Owens's debut novel in September 2018, weeks after it came out; her company Hello Sunshine then optioned it, and she produced the 2022 film.

World Book and Copyright Day, 23 April, was fixed on the traditional death date of which author?

Miguel de Cervantes died in April 1616 and was buried on the 23rd, the date also given for Shakespeare's death; Spain first held its book day on 7 October 1926, his presumed birthday, moving it to 23 April in 1930.

International Literacy Day, marked each 8 September since 1967, was proclaimed by which United Nations agency?

UNESCO proclaimed the day in 1966 and marks it each year by awarding its literacy prizes, one of them named for King Sejong, who created the Korean alphabet.

Which book has reportedly been translated into more languages than any other except the Bible?

The Little Prince has reportedly been translated into hundreds of languages, more than any book but the Bible; Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote it in exile in New York and vanished on a reconnaissance flight in 1944, a year after it appeared.

Which seven-volume French novel holds the Guinness World Record for longest novel?

In Search of Lost Time runs to some 1.2 million words across seven volumes published from 1913 to 1927; Proust paid Grasset to issue the first, Swann's Way, after the NRF turned it down.

What is the Japanese term for acquiring books and letting them pile up unread?

Tsundoku was in print in Japan by 1879, when the phrase 'tsundoku sensei' apparently poked fun at a teacher who owned many books he never read.

Who hosted Reading Rainbow throughout its 1983–2006 run on PBS?

LeVar Burton, already famous as Kunta Kinte in Roots, hosted the show throughout; in 2014 his Kickstarter to bring it back hit its $1 million goal within a day and went on to raise more than $5 million.

Which novelist was disinvited from Oprah's show in 2001?

Jonathan Franzen said the book club logo on The Corrections made him uneasy and dismissed some of its earlier picks, so Winfrey withdrew the invitation; nine years later she chose his next novel, Freedom, all the same.

Which James Frey memoir, an Oprah pick, was exposed in 2006 as partly invented?

A Million Little Pieces, Frey's 2003 addiction memoir, was exposed by The Smoking Gun in January 2006; Winfrey, who had at first defended him, then confronted Frey and his publisher Nan Talese on her show.

Which Seuss book aimed to replace school primers?

The Cat in the Hat answered a 1954 Life article in which John Hersey blamed insipid school readers for children's poor reading and suggested that Dr. Seuss be asked to do better.

Bennett Cerf bet Dr. Seuss he couldn't write a book in how many distinct words?

50 distinct words was the limit Cerf bet Seuss could not keep to; Green Eggs and Ham (1960) came out of the bet and uses exactly that many, with 'anywhere' the only one of more than one syllable.

The Dick and Jane readers of 1930–1965 taught reading by which method?

Whole-word (look-say) teaching had children memorise whole words by sight instead of sounding them out; Rudolf Flesch's 1955 bestseller Why Johnny Can't Read attacked it for skipping phonics.

Which American schoolbooks, first published in 1836, sold over 100 million copies?

The McGuffey Readers were written by William Holmes McGuffey, an Ohio professor and preacher, after a friend, the future author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, recommended him to the Cincinnati publisher that wanted them.

Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library, in 1971 by typing in which text?

Hart had been given an operator's account on a University of Illinois mainframe and, reckoning the computer time was worth $100 million, set out to repay it by typing in the US Declaration of Independence to share with other users.

Todd Bol began which worldwide book-sharing movement in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009?

Little Free Library began as Bol's tribute to his late mother, a schoolteacher: he built the first box as a one-room schoolhouse, then made more with his friend Rick Brooks to plant across the Midwest.

Which country star's Imagination Library mails children a free book every month?

Dolly Parton started the scheme in 1995 for children in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she grew up, inspired by her father, who never learned to read or write.

Reading Is Fundamental was founded in 1966 by Margaret McNamara, wife of which US official?

The Secretary of Defense was Robert McNamara; his wife Margaret began the scheme in 1966 after finding that the Washington children she tutored owned no books, and let each choose one to keep.

Which book-review site, launched in 2007, did Amazon buy in 2013?

Goodreads began after Otis Chandler, scanning a friend's bookshelf for ideas, decided he would rather take book tips from friends than from bestseller lists; it had about 16 million members when Amazon agreed to buy it.

Which organisation's Judith Krug co-founded Banned Books Week?

The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom was Krug's base from 1967; she launched the week in response to a sudden surge of challenges to books in schools, libraries and bookstores.

Which magazine, founded by the Wallaces in 1922, became one of the world's best-selling?

Reader's Digest was planned by DeWitt Wallace while he recovered from First World War wounds; after publishers turned it down, he and his wife Lila sold it by mail from a basement under a Greenwich Village speakeasy.

The world's largest book trade fair is held each October in which German city?

Frankfurt's fair lost its lead to Leipzig's in 1632 but won it back in the modern era: it is now the world's largest trade fair for books, while Leipzig's ranks second in Germany.

What does the Latin phrase ex libris on a bookplate mean?

Ex libris means 'from the books of', marking ownership; the earliest known printed bookplates are German, including a hand-coloured woodcut pasted into books that Hildebrand Brandenburg gave to Buxheim monastery around 1480.

Which institution co-founded the Talking Books programme with the American Foundation for the Blind in 1931?

The Library of Congress ran the scheme from 1931 under the Pratt-Smoot Act, with the American Foundation for the Blind producing the records; the 1932 test recordings included a chapter of Helen Keller's Midstream and Poe's The Raven.

The librarian M. L. Titcomb pioneered the American 'book wagon' in 1905 from Hagerstown, in which state?

Hagerstown is in western Maryland; Titcomb's horse-drawn wagon took library books to outlying farms from 1905 until a freight train smashed it at a crossing in 1910, and a motor wagon replaced it in 1912.

What is the name for a compulsive obsession with collecting books?

Bibliomania gave Thomas Frognall Dibdin the title of his 1809 book on obsessive collectors; a later sufferer, Sir Thomas Phillipps, amassed so many books and manuscripts that selling them off after his death took over a century.

Which script, developed by the Sumerians over 5,000 years ago, is generally considered the earliest writing system?

Cuneiform began with accountants: the earliest tablets from Uruk are ledgers, with signs for goods set beside numerals and names, and only centuries later was the script used for literature.

Which children's TV show, first aired in 1969, set out to teach preschoolers their letters and numbers?

Sesame Street was planned by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett to harness television's grip on small children, borrowing the techniques of commercial TV, short live and animated spots, to teach the alphabet and numbers.

The English word 'book' is thought to derive from a Germanic root meaning which tree?

Beech is the traditional answer: Old English boc is generally linked to bece, 'beech', the idea being that early Germanic peoples wrote on beechwood, though some dictionaries doubt the two words are related.

Which poet read his own work on the first record released by Caedmon in 1952?

Dylan Thomas was talked into the recording by Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Roney, two friends just out of college, and A Child's Christmas in Wales filled the B-side; their label, Caedmon, is credited with seeding the audiobook industry.

The audiobook market took off in the 1970s once which format began replacing records?

Cassettes gave Duvall Hecht a way to fill his hour-long commute into Los Angeles: the Olympic rowing champion founded Books on Tape, renting out recorded books by mail.

Which actor narrated the original British audiobooks of all seven Harry Potter novels?

Stephen Fry read the British editions and Jim Dale the American ones; by Fry's own account he kept tripping over the line 'Harry pocketed it', rang the author to ask for a change, and was told no.

Which president signed the 1800 act that founded the Library of Congress?

John Adams signed the act on 24 April 1800 as the government prepared to move to the new capital; it set aside $5,000 for books, and the first order from London brought 740 volumes and three maps.

Which country's tradition of giving books at Christmas is known as Jólabókaflóð, the 'Christmas book flood'?

Iceland's book flood dates from the Second World War, when currency restrictions limited imported gifts but paper stayed easier to bring in, so books became the Christmas present of choice.

The horse-drawn Warrington Perambulating Library, an early mobile library, was set up in which year?

The Warrington Mechanics' Institute launched its horse-drawn perambulating library in 1858 to lend more of its books to enthusiastic local readers; it is usually cited as Britain's first mobile library.

Which writer began Frankenstein at 18 after Lord Byron proposed a ghost-story contest at a villa near Lake Geneva?

Mary Shelley's novel first appeared anonymously on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. The idea had come to her after midnight in what she called a waking dream.

Which crime writer, ranked by Guinness as the best-selling fiction author ever, has sold over two billion books?

Agatha Christie also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, a murder mystery staged in London's West End since 1952.

Which songwriter won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for new poetic expressions within the American song tradition?

Bob Dylan was nominated in 1996 by Gordon Ball, a Virginia professor, starting a campaign that lasted 20 years. He already held a special Pulitzer citation from 2008.

Which American, denied lessons as an enslaved boy in Baltimore, learned to read from neighbourhood white children?

Frederick Douglass got his first alphabet lessons from Sophia Auld, until her husband stopped them. Hugh Auld feared that literacy would make enslaved people want freedom.

Which Gilded Age tycoon paid for more than 1,600 public library buildings across the United States?

Andrew Carnegie attached strings to every gift: a town had to commit to paying for upkeep and staff itself. His first public library went to Dunfermline, his Scottish birthplace.

Which Disney heroine, thought odd by her village for loving books, is given an entire castle library by her captor?

Belle's passion for reading was greatly expanded for the 1991 film, borrowing from Jo March in Little Women. Voice actor Paige O'Hara said the library scene was among the fastest she recorded.

Which 1987 fantasy film is framed as a grandfather reading a novel aloud to his sick grandson?

The Princess Bride presents its whole adventure as a book read at a bedside, with Peter Falk as the grandfather and Fred Savage as the boy. He begins as a reluctant listener and ends by asking for it again.

Which dystopian novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman whose job is to burn outlawed books and the houses hiding them?

Fahrenheit 451 is named for the temperature at which Ray Bradbury was told book paper catches fire. Later studies put the real figure anywhere between 424 and 475 degrees.

Which author of the Goosebumps horror series has been called the Stephen King of children's literature?

R. L. Stine started out writing joke books for children under the alias Jovial Bob Stine. His spooky series went on to sell over 400 million copies in 35 languages.

Which novel about rival gangs the Greasers and the Socs did S. E. Hinton mostly write at sixteen?

The Outsiders came out when Susan Eloise Hinton was 18. Her publisher suggested initials so that male reviewers would not dismiss a gang novel because a woman wrote it.

Which gluttonous rat fetches scraps of printed words for the spider in E. B. White's Charlotte's Web?

Templeton finds the word 'Radiant' in a laundry detergent advert, and Charlotte weaves it into her web to keep Wilbur famous. He later brings her 'Humble' at the county fair.

Which picture book sends Max, a boy in a wolf suit, to an island of monstrous creatures?

Where the Wild Things Are left its monsters nameless until Maurice Sendak helped turn it into an opera. He then named them after his own relatives, including Tzippy, Moishe and Bernard.

Which author-illustrator's 1969 picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar has appeared in more than 70 languages?

Eric Carle got his break when an author spotted a lobster he had collaged from tissue paper for an advert. The two then made Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? together.

Which former children's librarian created Ramona Quimby after young patrons could not find characters like themselves?

Beverly Cleary worked as a children's librarian in Yakima before her first book came out in 1950. Her stories of ordinary neighbourhood kids went on to sell 91 million copies.

Which Roald Dahl heroine learns to read at three and soon finishes every children's book in the library?

Matilda moves straight on to adult classics such as The Grapes of Wrath. She later finds she can move objects with her mind, and turns the power on her headmistress, Miss Trunchbull.

Which Mary Pope Osborne series sends siblings Jack and Annie from Frog Creek, Pennsylvania, on missions through time?

Magic Tree House trips begin when the children point at an illustration in one of the books stored there. Morgan le Fay, the enchantress of Arthurian legend, sends them on their first 28 adventures.

Which Jeff Kinney series, told as middle-schooler Greg Heffley's journal, first appeared online on Funbrain in 2004?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid moved into print three years later and has since sold more than 250 million copies. Greg himself rejects the title word and insists that what he keeps is a journal.

Which pen name appears on every Nancy Drew mystery, although a team of ghostwriters produced the books?

Carolyn Keene never existed: the Stratemeyer Syndicate hired writers to produce the manuscripts, beginning with Mildred Wirt Benson. She is credited as the main writer of the girl detective's adventures.

Which Louis Sachar novel sends Stanley Yelnats to Camp Green Lake, a desert boot camp, after a wrongful conviction?

Holes turns on a reading lesson: Zero offers to dig part of Stanley's pit each day if Stanley teaches him to read. The warden has the boys digging to find an outlaw's buried treasure.

In Lois Lowry's The Giver, which twelve-year-old is selected to inherit the position of Receiver of Memory?

Jonas lives in a community that has given up colour, climate and terrain to keep order. As Receiver, he alone must store every memory of the time before Sameness.

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which reclusive neighbour leaves Jem and Scout small gifts in a tree knothole?

Boo Radley is reaching out for friendship long before the children ever see him. When they are attacked on a dark walk home, an unseen rescuer saves them, and Scout finally meets her neighbour.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which Yale-educated bond salesman narrates the story as Gatsby's neighbour?

Nick Carraway is a Midwesterner and war veteran newly arrived in West Egg, on Long Island. His creator was an Ivy Leaguer too, though Fitzgerald went to Princeton.

In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which government department employs Winston Smith to falsify historical records?

The Ministry of Truth is named for the opposite of its work, as are all four of Oceania's departments. Peace runs the war, Love handles torture and Plenty manages starvation.

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, which object does Ralph use to summon the boys and command authority as chief?

A conch shell stands for order on the island, so its end is brutal. Roger drops a boulder that kills Piggy and smashes it in the same instant.

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, which loyal cart-horse answers every setback with the maxim 'I will work harder'?

Boxer is repaid with betrayal: the pigs sell him to the knacker's yard and spend the money on a case of whisky. Squealer assures the others that the van belonged to a vet.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, which dead court jester's skull is dug up in the gravedigger scene of Act 5?

Yorick once carried the young Hamlet on his back 'a thousand times', which is why the skull shakes him. He remembers 'a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy'.

In Homer's Odyssey, which queen of Ithaca stalls her suitors by weaving a burial shroud she never finishes?

Penelope undoes part of the shroud every night for three years, until one of her maids gives the trick away. She had promised to choose a husband once it was done.

Which Arthur Miller play uses the Salem witch trials as an allegory for the anti-communist hunts of the 1950s?

The Crucible proved prophetic for its author. Miller was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956 and convicted of contempt the next year for refusing to name names.

Which Nigerian novelist took the title of Things Fall Apart from a line in a W. B. Yeats poem?

Chinua Achebe wrote it while working at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. It became the most widely studied, translated and read African novel, appearing in over fifty languages.

In C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which sweet does the White Witch use to win over Edmund?

Turkish delight sales rose after the 2005 film version reached cinemas. In the book the Witch's sweets come with a promise of power, and Edmund betrays his siblings for more.

Which Nobel Peace Prize winner recounted his teenage years in Auschwitz and Buchenwald in the memoir Night?

Elie Wiesel was deported as a teenager from Sighet, his hometown in Romania. Awarding him the prize in 1986, the Nobel committee called him a 'messenger to mankind'.

In the Holocaust memoir Night, which relative does the teenage narrator care for through Auschwitz and Buchenwald?

His father, Shlomo, weakens until the usual roles reverse and the teenage son becomes the caregiver. He dies in January 1945, three months before American troops liberate the camp.

The Holocaust memoir Night began as a far longer manuscript, And the World Remained Silent, written in which language?

Yiddish was the language of the original 862-page manuscript, cut to 245 pages for its first printing in Argentina. A French version, La Nuit, followed with help from the novelist François Mauriac.

What name did Anne Frank give the imaginary friend to whom she addressed her diary entries in hiding?

Kitty was the surrogate friend Anne invented days after the diary arrived as a birthday present. The red-checked autograph book was no surprise: she had chosen it in a bookshop the day before.

Which learning disability, the most common of all, makes it hard to spell words and sound them out when reading?

Dyslexia was once known as word blindness. It affects an estimated 3 to 7 percent of people, and adults who have it often read with good comprehension, only more slowly.

Which age-related stiffening of the eye's lens leaves many adults over forty needing glasses for small print?

Presbyopia shows itself when people start holding reading material farther away to focus. It is also known as age-related farsightedness, or long sight in Britain.

Which phenomenon, first published in English in 1935, slows people naming the ink colour of a mismatched colour word?

The Stroop effect shows how automatic reading becomes: the word 'red' printed in blue is hard to ignore, so naming the colour takes longer. It carries the name of psychologist John Ridley Stroop.

What is the term for the silent inner speech, with tiny movements of the larynx, that accompanies reading?

Subvocalization gives each word its sound as it is read. Speed-reading courses often prescribe long drills to eliminate it, arguing that the inner voice slows readers down.

Which language's alphabet, written right to left in a cursive style, has 28 letters and no capital forms?

Arabic letters change shape instead: most take different forms depending on where they fall in a word. The script stays joined-up and flowing even in print.

Which Cherokee, who never went to school or learned English, completed a writing system for his language in 1821?

Sequoyah first taught the syllabary to his young daughter, Ayokeh. Many neighbours suspected witchcraft, and his wife is said to have burned his early work.

Which language on the Rosetta Stone, carved below hieroglyphs and Demotic script, could scholars already read?

Greek gave scholars their crib: the slab repeats one decree of 196 BC three times with only minor differences. Champollion published his breakthrough on the hieroglyphs in 1822.

Which ancient writing style, named for the way an ox turns while ploughing, reverses direction on alternate lines?

Boustrophedon lines mirror their letters too, so every second row reads backwards. Easter Island's rongorongo tablets go a step further and turn alternate lines upside down.

What is a manuscript page, like one hiding lost Archimedes works, called when its first text was scraped off for reuse?

A palimpsest saved money when writing material was costly. The Archimedes pages were scraped, washed and covered with a religious text in 1229, then read again centuries later using X-ray and ultraviolet imaging.

Which Argentine writer imagined a universe of hexagonal rooms holding every possible book in 'The Library of Babel'?

Jorge Luis Borges was a librarian himself, and in 1955 he was made director of Argentina's National Library. By about the same time he had gone completely blind.

Which merchant is thought to have brought the first printing press to England, setting it up at Westminster?

William Caxton had watched the new printing trade in Cologne and first ran a press in Bruges. Back home, the first book he is known to have produced was Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

Which Umberto Eco murder mystery, set in an Italian monastery in 1327, hinges on a lost book by Aristotle?

The Name of the Rose conceals its lost volume, Aristotle's treatise on comedy, in a labyrinthine library kept by an elderly blind monk. He fears that laughter threatens God's order.

Which Japanese classic, written by a lady-in-waiting in the early 11th century, is often called the world's first novel?

The Tale of Genji is credited to Murasaki Shikibu, a noblewoman and poet of the Heian court. Its claim to be first is still argued, since Roman tales such as the Satyricon are centuries older.

Which eponymous verb comes from the English physician who published The Family Shakespeare with its ruder lines removed?

Bowdlerize does Thomas Bowdler a small injustice: the first edition's cuts were largely the work of his sister, Henrietta. He later gave Gibbon's Decline and Fall the same treatment.

Which publishing term did humorist Gelett Burgess popularise with a joke dust jacket showing a fictional Miss Belinda?

Blurb first appeared on a spoof jacket wrapped around his own book for guests at a trade dinner. It pictured Miss Belinda Blurb calling out 'in the act of blurbing'.

Which American children's book award, first given in 1922, honours an 18th-century English publisher of juvenile books?

The Newbery Medal was proposed by Publishers Weekly editor Frederic Melcher, making it the first children's book award in the world. He also paid for the medal's design and production.