Following are a few great famous authors and writers who suffer, or thrive from, a learning disability. Agatha Christie Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time, with about four billion copies sold and translations into at least 103 languages. She is best known for her detective novels and short story collections.
Following are a few great famous authors and writers who suffer, or thrive from, a learning disability.
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time, with about four billion copies sold and translations into at least 103 languages. She is best known for her detective novels and short story collections. But at the same time, she couldn’t even balance her own chequebook due to her learning disability, believed to be dysgraphia. She had a hard time spelling correctly, as a self proclaimed “extraordinarily bad speller” and was not good about remembering numbers, but her learning disability did not hold her back.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
As one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, F. Scott Fitzgerald is best known for his novel, The Great Gatsby, as well as many short stories. He is believed to have had a learning disability which was mostly likely dyslexia. It’s reported that he was kicked out of school at the age of 12 for not focusing or finishing his work, and he had a very hard time spelling, but he succeeded as a writer despite his disability.
George Bernard Shaw
The famous Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote more than 60 plays and is the only person to be awarded an Oscar as well as a Nobel Prize for Literature for the same film, Pygmalion. It’s believed that Shaw suffered from ADD (attention deficit disorder). Although he was a co-founder of the London School of Economics, he did not like formal education, noting that “Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents.”
Jules Verne
Jules Verne pioneered the science fiction genre and inspired steampunk. He is most famous for his novels, including A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days. As a student, he was more interested in writing than working in other subjects. He didn’t do well in school, and often complained of having a hard time focusing. Although undiagnosed, it’s believed that Verne may have had a form of ADD or ADHD.
A test for the “grown-ups”
The following short quiz consists of four questions and tells whether you are
qualified to be a “professional”. The questions are not too difficult.
1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?
2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?
3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend
except one. Which animal does not attend?
4. There is a river you must cross. But it is inhabited by crocodiles. How
do you manage it?
Can you figure out the famous quote below?
Aye, dame, I am befuddled. But in the forenoon I will be clear-headed and you will still be unsightly.
Yes, madam, I am drunk. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
This humorous quote was by Winston Churchill, British prime minister and author.
Answers
1. Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe and close the door.
2. Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door.
3. The Elephant. The Elephant is in the refrigerator.
4. You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the meeting!
Compiled by Maria Shirazi
