Edgar Allan Poe T-shirt Now Available

Edgar Allan Poe has always been our favorite writer when it comes to horror fiction. He was born in Boston in 1809. Tragically, his father abandoned him and his two siblings shortly before his mother died. This all happened before Poe had reached the age of two.

Young Edgar was taken in by John Allan, a tobacco merchant, who bestowed his middle name on him. Poe had a stormy relationship with his foster father. He attended the University of Virginia for a year and made good grades, but when his foster father did not send enough money to cover tuition and fees, Poe accumulated gambling debts and was soon forced to drop out.

Poe signed up for the army when he was 18 because it was the only way he could support himself. Two years later, he went to West Point, but not finding military life to his liking, he purposely had himself court-martialed for "gross neglect of duty" and ended his career early.

Shortly after leaving the military in 1831, Poe published his third book of poems. None of them sold very well. He took a position as an editor, a job which he was to continue throughout his life, although mostly in short stints for different magazines.

Throughout his career, Poe was better known for his literary criticism than his own creative efforts, although he did achieve some fame when his poem "The Raven" was published in 1845. Unfortunately, this success was followed by death of his wife and the failure of the magazine he was currently editing.

Poe died in 1849 of unknown causes. He was found unconscious in the streets of Baltimore and taken to the hospital, but he never recovered. It is said that the smallest amounts of alcohol could change his personality and lead to erratic behaviour. After his wife's death, he may have turned to alcohol more than would be thought prudent. We will never know.

The good news is we finished our Edgar Allan Poe t-shirt just in time for Halloween. Now you can wear your favorite writer of the macabre.

New Oscar Wilde T-Shirt

We first became acquainted with Oscar Wilde in high school when the theater department put on a production of "The Importance of Being Earnest". This is a very witty play that commented on the hypocritical morality of the Victorian era. It premiered in London in 1895 and proved to be the beginning of the end for Oscar Wilde. Although it was a huge hit with audiences, it only ran for 83 performances because Wilde was soon involved in a public scandal concerning his homosexuality. He was convicted on charges of "gross indecency" and sentenced to two years of hard labor.

Oscar Wilde didn't write anymore plays although he did write "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" about his prison experience. After he was released in 1897, he moved to Paris where he spent his last few years before dying of cerebral meningitis in 1900.

We think of Oscar Wilde as a real non-conformist. He was not afraid to be true to himself in a time which had very oppressive views on behavior. And for that, we salute him.

Below is the design for our Oscar Wilde t-shirt. Head over to our Zazzle store, and you will also find a couple of humorous quotes by Oscar Wilde in our Literary Quotes section. Enjoy!

Does This Shirt Make Me Look Chinese?

We're very proud of our new Chinese character t-shirt design. There's not a lot to it, really. It reads right to left in simplified Chinese: "Does This Shirt Make Me Look Chinese?" Well, sometimes less is more.

We think this a nice shirt to wear because people who can read Chinese will think it's funny, and people who can't read Chinese will just think it looks cool. Where ever you wear it, it's sure to get questions.

This Chinese character t-shirt is now available in our Zazzle shop, Beijing Central. We've already ordered several for ourselves.

Environmental T-Shirts: Cool It Down! and Scooters!

We here at Words Plus Paper like to read novels and short stories, but sometimes we like to toss a little non-fiction into the mix as well. Just recently we finished reading "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. It's been on our list for years.

We're sure many of you have heard of this book, even if you haven't read it yourselves. First published in 1962, it spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was serialized in The New Yorker magazine. This book called environmental issues to public attention and led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Critics claim that Rachel Carson was a lunatic advocating the banning of pesticides, but this book's lasting influence is due to her calm and reasonable approach of using scientific technology responsibly. Per Carson, “man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself…”.

Rachel Carson did not specifically address global warming, but when we decided to design an environmental t-shirt, that was the first subject that popped into our minds. The second thing we thought of was a line from an old Velvet Underground song: cool it down. We doubt that Lou Reed was pondering the Gaia hypothesis while penning those lyrics, but we decided to use it anyway. You can see the result below.

Like everyone else, we've also been hit hard in the pocketbook by rising gas prices. More and more, we've been seeing people around town on scooters. They certainly look gas-efficient, so we thought we'd pay homage to these fun little machines. And thus, our second shirt: I Love My Scooter.




These designs and more are available at our Zazzle-powered sister store, Rising Tide Tees. Stop by today and say hello!

Lit Star T-shirt Now Available

Well, I guess we just got tired of seeing that phrase "rockstar" everywhere. Or maybe we're just jealous because none of us can play guitar (or even drums) very well, although some of us do have experience with power chords.

Anyhoo, we were kind of wondering what it would be like if writers were as revered as rock stars. And okay, there's a few and one of them we actually admire. Yes, J.K. Rowling. We've read all the Potter books. But let's face it, most bestsellers are real trash. We don't want to name names, but James Patterson and Dan Brown come to mind.

Still, in the face of extreme adversity, we decided to go ahead and design a t-shirt that treats the budding writer like a rock star. We've called this new design "Lit Star" and we think that pretty much sums it up. This t-shirt design is particularly cool because it's done in faded colors with a distressed, vintage look. If you're not a writer yourself, then get one for the aspiring novelist in your life. We know that everybody knows someone who dreams of being an author.

Mark Twain T-shirt Just Added

Our new Mark Twain t-shirt is now in our Zazzle store. Twain, the pseudonym for Samuel Clemens, was one of America's truly great writers. Born in Florida, Missouri in 1835 and raised in Hannibal, he worked as a typesetter and a printer while educating himself in public libraries in the evening. He also worked as a steamboat captain, a very lucrative job, for a couple of years before the Civil War broke out and he headed west.

Although he started out writing mostly travelogues and humor, his most famous work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, took a darker twist, commenting on the hypocrisies of American life. Huck is often faced with choices between doing what he thinks is right and what society thinks is right. When wondering if he should turn in his friend, Jim, a runaway slave, he thinks long and hard before deciding not to do it. "All right, then, I'll go to hell", he says to himself. This phrase is the basis of our Huck Finn shirt.

We hope you like them as much as we do.

More Famous Writers and a Store

This week has been very busy as we've been setting up our new store on Zazzle. The name of the store is, of course, Words Plus Paper. Now, we will no longer have to link to items individually. You can go into the store and browse all of our designs, including the ones that never make it on the blog.

We will also start updating the blog more frequently but with only 1 or 2 featured designs at a time. This will allow us to look more closely at the inspiration behind our favorite designs.

This week, however, we do have four new writer t-shirts. First is Henry David Thoreau, the bad boy of Walden. Have we mentioned before how much we love his essay "Civil Disobedience". Supposedly Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi were both inspired by his writing.

Next is Fyodor Dostoevsky. You must have known we were Crime and Punishment fans because we featured the Raskolnikov for President bumper sticker in a previous blog entry. Well, we still are. The Brothers Karamazov is on our reading list.

We also have a Charlotte Bronte t-shirt. She created the memorable character Jane Eyre, a strong, moral, and independent woman, in a time not known for independent women. This semi-autobiographical novel is still considered to be one of England's finest.

And finally, we've done a Jack London t-shirt. Sometimes he's passed off as too commercial, but his short stories are a fine example of the art. All of his works are available on the internet at jacklondons.net. Read "To Build a Fire" again, if you haven't already.

We hope you enjoy the new designs. Feel free to stop by the store. Thanks!