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] attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)