Books Fatal to Their Authors 

Peter Hempson Ditchfield (1854 - 1930) 


This is a collection of stories of authors who have lost their fortunes 
and sometimes their lives after writing a book. The liberty of a 
person's conscience was unknown in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries; why should a man be drawn and quartered for writing what 
we know is the truth? What must it have been like to have lived in that 
era? At the time it was dangerous to say that the earth went around 
the sun, and many other theories were treated in the same way. 


Running time 05:44:19 


Cover design: Kathryn Delaney 

Cover art: fresco by Johann Michael Rottmayr, Allegory 
Faith - Angel burning the heretical texts of Martin 
Luther (detail), 1714. 


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