5 legendary literary feuds you will be surprised to know about

Fights and disagreements between families, friends, lovers, and even acquaintances are common in both life and literature. Interestingly, in literature, they sometimes take a larger-than-life and surreal turn. However, what if tell you that many creators of such memorable literary feuds have had a fair share of similar real-life experiences as well? Surprised? Here is a look at 5 legendary literary feuds you will be startled to know about.

Both of them were once good friends. However, things turned nasty when James listed Wells among authors who he considered to be producing "affluents turbid and unrestrained". Wells responded by referring to James as a "painful hippopotamus"! This was followed by both of them sending mean letters to each other back and forth.

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Conrad didn't seem to like any of his contemporaries. As per sculptor Jacob Epstein, Conrad's opinion of Lawrence was: "D.H. Lawrence had started well, but had gone wrong. Filth. Nothing but obscenities." Furthermore, Conrad also criticized Herman Melville for "knowing nothing of the sea".

Responding to all this, Lawrence said, "Melville's vision is ... far sounder than Joseph Conrad's, because Melville doesn't sentimentalize the ocean and the sea's unfortunates. Snivel in a wet hanky like Lord Jim." He also felt that pessimism "pervades all Conrad and such folks—the Writers among the Ruins. I can't forgive Conrad for being so sad and giving in."

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In a letter to his brother in 1819, Keats wrote, "You speak of Lord Byron and me. There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees—I describe what I imagine—Mine is the hardest task." On the other hand, Byron didn't even like to be mentioned in the same sentence as Keats.

When Keats died in 1821, Byron wrote to John Murray:

"Is it true - what Shelley writes me that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it - though I think he took the wrong line as a poet - and was spoilt by Cockneyfying and Suburbing - and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lempriere's Dictionary. - I know by experience that a savage review is Hemlock to a sucking author - and the one on me - (which produced the English Bards &c.) knocked me down - but I got up again. - Instead of bursting a blood-vessel - I drank three bottles of claret - and began an answer - finding that there was nothing in the Article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head in an honourable way."

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Anderson was a long-time fan of Dickens. In 1857, he received an invitation from Dickens to his estate in Gad's Hill. While Andersen was positively enamored, Dickens felt the opposite.

"Dickens is one of the most amiable men that I know, and possesses as much heart as intellect," wrote Anderson. On the other hand, Dickens ridiculed his visitor! "He speaks no language but his own Danish, and is suspected of not even knowing that," he told a friend.

Furthermore, after Anderson left, Dickens allegedly pinned a note up in the guest room, which read: "Hans Christian Andersen slept in this room for five weeks—which seems to the family AGES!"

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In 2005, things got a little heated between Rushdie and Updike when the latter reviewed the former's 'Shalimar the Clown', wherein he wrote, "Why, oh why, did Salman Rushdie ... call one of his major characters Maximilian Ophuls?"

Rushdie, in a spiteful retort, said: '"A name is just a name. 'Why, oh why’ ...?' Well, why not? Somewhere in Las Vegas there's probably a male prostitute called 'John Updike.'"

Rushdie didn't stop there. Criticizing Updike's then-latest novel 'Terrorist', he said that it was "beyond awful. He should stay in his parochial neighborhood and write about wife-swapping, because it's what he can do."

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