Here's an extraordinary thing.
You've probably all heard of certain Victorian authors: Oscar Wilde, creator of The Portrait of Dorian Gray and many other masterpieces; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of Sherlock Holmes; Robert Louis Stevenson, who penned the frightening Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde amongst other things; JM Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan; and Bram Stoker, creator of Dracula.
All of the particular works I've mentioned, originated by these very famous authors, were all written around the same time period -the latter part of the nineteenth century, in England. So far, everything here is common knowledge.
But what you probably didn't know is that all of them knew each other. And they used to frequent many of the same venues in London in the 1880s and 90s. A BBC Radio 4 programme some time ago explored the connections -Gyles Brandreth investigated to find out why these fictional creations remain compelling to this day, what they have in common, and how they could perhaps have influenced each other.
It's one of those amazing stories which the world of literature often throws up -like the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, writers of some of the most popular books of the twentieth century, were close friends.
The interconnections are astonishing. What they can tell us about literature itself and how it works is fascinating. All part of the living world around us...
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