Matthew Pearl
Matthew Pearl
Matthew Pearl is an American novelist and educator. His novels include The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens, and The Technologists. Editions have been published in more than 40 countries...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 October 1975
CountryUnited States of America
elements explosive fictional historical history
What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
amusement british complete county dickens english great haunted opened park ride
Surprisingly, it was not an American but a British company that opened an amusement park in 2007 called Dickens World, located in the English county of Kent, complete with an Ebenezer Scrooge Haunted House, a Great Expectations Boat Ride and the as-advertised 'costumed Dickensian characters.'
endless good graphic kinds maybe number tend
I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.
campus chance coverage double gives intense minority presents reflect repeated small stories telling unstable
The intense media coverage of today's campus shootings presents a double edged sword. On the one hand, it gives us a chance to think about and reflect on the causes; on the other hand, in a very small minority of unstable minds, the repeated telling of the stories can be interpreted as glamorous.
collected covers poe school worse
I still have my high school copy of the collected Poe - missing its covers and pretty worse for the wear.
aspects believe exciting fictional historical history writer
As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.
brought power remarkable
There's a remarkable power about reading together, reading collectively, that's brought out by reading groups.
food porter square time
Porter Square Books was the only place I could find that was dog-friendly, work-friendly, and had food. I was there all the time.
final kingdom recognize states united until
Up until the final decade of the nineteenth century, the United States and the United Kingdom did not recognize copyright in each other's creative works.
arrived carriage charles chased dickens expecting mob parker people secret
When Charles Dickens arrived in Boston Harbor, where he started, they had to keep it secret because there was such a mob of people expecting him, and they actually chased down his carriage at the hotel, the Parker House Hotel.
faithful association admiration
I prefer the society of one faithful person to an association of rapid talkers, who more than anything else seek admiration from one another.
dissection knows
Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us to know one another.
drinking men said
Though a woman tempted man to eat, my dear Longfellow," said Holmes, "you never hear of Eve having to do with his drinking, for he took to that of his own notion.
death decline dickens draw health line november recover sort states straight ultimate united
When Dickens arrives in the United States in November of 1867, he's already in questionable health. So by the end of the trip, he was really in failing condition, and really, he would never recover completely after this point, and you could sort of draw a straight line to his ultimate decline and death.