Literature
There is a greater number of bookshops per capita in Melbourne than any other Australian city. In August 2008, Melbourne was designated as a City of Literature in UNESCO's Creative Cities Network program, recognising the role literature plays in the cultural life of Melbourne through its festivals, libraries, bookshops, publishing and other literary events and activities.
The Melbourne Writers Festival plays a significant role in establishing Melbourne's credence as a city which promotes and respects literature.
The Wheeler Centre a literary and publishing centre housed in the southern wing of the State Library of Victoria opened in February 2010.
Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), set in boom time Melbourne, remains a classic of crime fiction. Hume gathered material for the novel during sojourns in Melbourne's slums and Little Bourke Street.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Melbourne
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
“The higher, the more exalted the society, the greater is its culture and refinement, and the less does gossip prevail. People in such circles find too much of interest in the world of art and literature and science to discuss, without gloating over the shortcomings of their neighbors.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)