The Book of the Dead

Many of the books listed herein acted as sources for the lives in this book. More important, they seem to us the perfect places from which to start your own explorations in the Underworld.

All books of this kind are built on the scholarship and insight of others. Some repositories were raided more regularly than any others. At the head of the table stands the completely revised 2004 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (www.oxforddnb.com), which somehow manages to be both accurate and interesting about fifty-seven thousand lives. It is a national treasure without parallel. Close behind it comes the American National Biography (www.anb.org) and the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, the last great encyclopedia to be written by real people, rather than teams of academics, with entries by Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Bertrand Russell, Algernon Swinburne, and even the anarchist Peter Kropotkin. One of the many excellent things about dead people is that unlike scientific knowledge or our taste in music, the details of their lives never go out of date. It would be churlish not to mention www.wikipedia.com. For all its unevenness and flaws, it is an invaluable tool that will only grow in usefulness the more of us who use it.

Wherever possible we have tried to indicate editions of books that are still in print.

1 There’s Nothing Like a Bad Start in Life

Leonardo da Vinci

Charles Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind (Allen Lane, 2004)

Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks (Profile, 2005)

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud,The Penguin Freud Reader, ed. Adam Phillips (Penguin, 2006)

Peter Gay, Freud: A Life in Our Time (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998)

Isaac Newton

James Gleick, Isaac Newton (Fourth Estate, 2003)

Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter (Faber, 2009)

Oliver Heaviside

Basil Mahon, Oliver Heaviside: Maverick Mastermind of Electricity (Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2009)

Paul J. Nahin, Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age, new ed. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)

Lord Byron

Ashley Hay, The Secret: The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron (Aurum, 2001)

Fiona McCarthy, Byron: Life & Legend (Faber, 2003)

Ada Lovelace

Betty O’Toole, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer (Pickering & Chatto, 1992)

Benjamin Woolley, The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and Byron’s Daughter (Macmillan, 1999)

Hans Christian Andersen

Jens Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen (Duckworth, 2005)

Jackie Wullschlager, Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller (Allen Lane, 2000)

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, tr. Haakon Chevalier (Dover Publications, 2009)

Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí (Faber, 1997)

2 Happy-go-lucky

Epicurus

Epicurus, The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia, tr. Brad Inwood and Lloyd P. Gerson (Hackett Publishing Co., 1994)

Benjamin Franklin

H. W. Brands, The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (Doubleday, 2000)

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography & Other Writings, ed. Ormond Seavey (Oxford, 1993)

Edward Jenner

John Baron, The Life of Edward Jenner (London, 1827)

Richard B. Fisher, Edward Jenner 1749–1823 (André Deutsch, 1991)

Mary Seacole

Jane Robinson, Mary Seacole: The Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea (Constable & Robinson, 2005)

Mary Seacole, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, new ed. (Penguin, 2005)

Moll Cutpurse

R. Sanders, Newgate Calendar or Malefactor’s Bloody Register (London, 1760)

Janet Todd and Elizabeth Spearing, Counterfeit Ladies (New York University Press, 1994)

Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character (W. W. Norton & Co., 1985)

James Gleick, Genius: Richard Feynman & Modern Physics (Little, Brown, 1992)

Richard Leighton, Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman’s Last Journey (W. W. Norton & Co., 1991)

3 Driven

Robert E. Peary

Fergus Fleming, Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole (Granta, 2001)

Jean Malaurie, Ultima Thule: Explorers and Natives in the Polar North (W. W. Norton & Co., 2003)

Josephine Peary, My Arctic Journal: A Year among Ice-fields and Eskimos, new ed. (Cooper Square Press, 2002)

Mary Kingsley

Dea Birkett, Mary Kingsley: Imperial Adventuress (Palgrave Macmillan, 1992)

Katherine Frank, Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley (Houghton Mifflin, 1986)

Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, new ed. (National Geographic, 2002)

Alexander von Humboldt

Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative: Of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, new ed. (abridged), tr. Jason Wilson (Penguin, 2006)

N. A. Rupke, Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (Chicago University Press, 2008)

Francis Galton

Martin Brookes, Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton (Bloomsbury, 2004)

Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences, new ed. (Prometheus, 2005)

William Morris

Fiona McCarthy, William Morris (Faber, 1994)

William Morris, News from Nowhere & Other Writings, new ed. (Penguin, 2004)

4 Let’s Do It

Giacomo Casanova

Giacomo Casanova, The Story of My Life, new ed. tr. Stephanie Sartarelli and Sophia Hawkes (Penguin, 2002)

Ian Kelly, Casanova: Actor, Spy, Lover, Priest (Hodder, 2008)

Catherine the Great

Simon Dixon, Catherine the Great (Profile Books, 2009)

Virginia Rounding, Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power (Hutchinson, 2006)

Cora Pearl

Katie Hickman, Courtesans (HarperCollins, 2003)

Cora Pearl, The Memoirs of Cora Pearl: The Erotic Reminiscences of a Flamboyant Nineteenth-century Courtesan, ed. William Blatchford (Granada, 1983)

Virginia Rounding, Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans (Bloomsbury, 2003)

H. G. Wells

Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie, H. G. Wells: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1973)

H. G. Wells, H. G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography, new ed. (Faber, 2008)

Colette

Colette, Cheri, new ed. (Vintage, 2001)

Judith Thurman, Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (Bloomsbury, 1999)

Marie Bonaparte

Celia Bertin, Marie Bonaparte: A Life (Harcourt, 1982)

Alfred Kinsey

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, Sex the Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey (Chatto & Windus, 1998)

Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, ed. Alfred C. Kinsey (W. B. Saunders, 1948)

Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, ed. Alfred C. Kinsey (W. B. Saunders, 1953)

Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead, My Autobiography, new ed. (University Press of Mississippi, 2008)

David Bret, Tallulah Bankhead: A Scandalous Life (Robson, 1996)

5 Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone

Helena, Comtesse de Noailles

Catherine Caufield, The Emperor of the United States of America & Other Magnificent British Eccentrics (Routledge, 1981)

George Fordyce

Clarke, The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the Most Eminent Persons, who Have Flourished in Great Britain (London, 1832)

John Cordy Jeaffreson, A Book about Doctors (London, 1860)

Elizabeth, Empress of Austria

Joan Haslip, The Lonely Empress: Elizabeth of Austria (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965)

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Road to Wellville: A Comedy of the Heart & Other Organs (Little, Brown, 1981)

Henry Ford

Henry Ford, My Life & Work (NuVision Publications, 2007)

Steven Watts, The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford & the American Century (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)

Howard Hughes

Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske, Howard Hughes: The Untold Story (Little, Brown, 1996)

Howard Hughes, The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters, ed. Richard Hack, (New Millenium Press, 2001)

6 Grin and Bear It

Pieter Stuyvesant

Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (Doubleday, 2004)

General Antonio López de Santa Anna

Will Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2008)

Daniel Lambert

Jan Bondeson, The Pig-faced Lady of Manchester Square & Other Medical Marvels (Tempus, 2004)

Florence Nightingale

Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: The Woman & her Legend (Viking, 2008)

Florence Nightingale, Florence Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005)

Hugh Small, Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel (Constable & Robinson, 1999)

Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, tr. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2002)

Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, tr. Richard Zenith (Grove Atlantic, 2002)

Dawn Langley Simmons

Dawn Langley Simmons, Dawn: A Charleston Legend (Wyrick & Co., 1995)

7 The Monkey Keepers

Oliver Cromwell

Antonia Fraser, Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)

H. E. Marshall, Through Great Britain & Ireland with Cromwell (London, 1912)

Catherine de’ Medici

Leonie Frieda, Catherine de’ Medici (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004)

Sir Jeffrey Hudson

Nick Page, Lord Minimus: The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Smallest Man (St. Martin’s Press, 2002)

Rembrandt van Rijn

Charles Fowkes, The Life of Rembrandt (London, 1978)

Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt’s Universe (Thames & Hudson, 2006)

Frida Kahlo

Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (Harper & Row, 1983)

Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo, 1907–1954: Pain and Passion (Taschen, 2000)

Madame Mao

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (Jonathan Cape, 2005)

Ross Terrill, Madame Mao: The White-boned Demon (Stanford UP, 1999)

Frank Buckland

G. Frank Buckland, Curiosities of Natural History (London, 1859)

Frank Buckland, Curious Men (MacSweeneys, 2008)

H. O. Burgess, Curious Ark: The Curious World of Frank Buckland (New York, 1967)

King Alexander I of Greece

John Van der Kiste, Kings of the Hellenes: The Greek Kings, 1863–1974 (Alan Sutton, 1994)

8 Who Do You Think You Are?

Titus Oates

John Kenyon, The Popish Plot (Heinemann, 1972)

Alessandro, Count Cagliostro

Philippa Faulks and Robert D. L. Cooper, The Masonic Magician: The Life and Death of Count Cagliostro and his Egyptian Rite (Watkins, 2008)

Iain McCalman, The Seven Ordeals of Count Cagliostro (Random House, 2004)

George Psalmanazar

Michael Keevak, The Pretended Asian: George Psalmanazar’s Eighteenth-Century Formosan Hoax (Wayne State University Press, 2001)

Princess Caraboo

Jennifer Raison and Michael Goldie, Caraboo: The Servant Girl Princess (Windrush, 1994)

Louis de Rougemont

Louis de Rougemont, The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (Dodo Press, 2009)

James Barry

Rachel Holmes, Scanty Particulars: The Life of Dr. James Barry (Viking, 2002)

Ignácz Trebitsch Lincoln

Bernard Wasserstein, The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln (Yale, 1988)

Tuesday Lobsang Rampa

T. Lobsang Rampa, Living with the Lama (Random House, 1964)

T. Lobsang Rampa, The Third Eye (Random House, 1956)

Sheelagh Rouse, Twenty-Five Years with T. Lobsang Rampa (Lulu.com, 2006)

Archibald Belaney

Lovat Dickson, Wilderness Man: The Amazing True Story of Grey Owl, new ed. (Pocket Books, 1999)

Armand G. Ruffo, Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney (Coteau Books, 2003)

9 Once You’re Dead, You’re Made for Life

Emma Hamilton

Flora Fraser, Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986)

Kate Williams, England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (Hutchinson, 2006)

Dr. John Dee

John Dee, The Diaries of John Dee, ed. Edward Fenton (Day Books, 1998)

Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge, 2006)

Benjamin Woolley, The Queen’s Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Doctor Dee (HarperCollins, 2001)

Jack Parsons

John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons (Feral House, 2005)

George Pendle, Strange Angel (Harcourt, 2005)

Nikola Tesla

Robert Lomas, The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century (Headline, 2000)

Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla (Citadel Press, 1998)

Karl Marx

Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford, 2000)

Francis Wheen, Karl Marx (Fourth Estate, 1999)

10 Is That All There Is?

St. Cuthbert

The Venerable Bede, The Age of Bede, ed. D. H. Farmer (Penguin, 2004)

Ann Lee

Richard Francis, Ann the Word: The Story of Ann Lee (Arcade, 2000)

William Blake

Peter Ackroyd, Blake (Sinclair Stevenson, 1995)

William Blake, The Poetry & Prose of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1927)

Marsha Keith Schuchard, Why Mrs. Blake Cried (Century, 2006)

Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism & Other Essays, ed. Alan Ryan (Penguin, 2004)

Leslie Stephen, The Utilitarians (London, 1900)

Richard Buckminster Fuller

J. Baldwin, Bucky Works: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas for Today (J. Wiley & Sons, 1996)

R. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Lars Müller Publishers, 2008)

Anyone who would like to offer corrections or get specific sources is welcome to visit the special forum on the QI website: www.qi.com/talk/bookofthedead.

No book of this kind could be written without a crack team of researchers. For this project, three of them went well beyond the usual call of duty. Tim Ecott and James Harkin, as well as providing meticulous research notes on a host of lives, also wrote early drafts of some of the chapters, while Andy Murray, like a demented literary bodysnatcher, produced a constant stream of the freshly researched dead for our consideration.

Piers Fletcher, Molly Oldfield, Justin Pollard, Mat Coward, Dan Schreiber, Arron Ferster, and Will Bowen also added the odd corpse to the pile, as did Xander Cansell and Tibor Fischer. Special thanks must go to Catriona Luke, who raided the obituary cupboards at several large newspapers.

Thomas Edison once wrote that, “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” The team at Crown are the most elegant hustlers in the business. Particular thanks must go to John Glusman, Shaye Areheart, Dyana Messina, and Domenica Alioto. It’s an honor to be part of their list.

Special thanks are due to our wives, Sarah Lloyd and Rachael Kerr, but this book is dedicated to our children, Harry, Claudia, Caitlin, Stella, George, Hamish, and Rory, for reminding us daily that life really is the thing.