1. George Norman Douglas was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind.
25 Facts About Norman Douglas
1. 2.
Norman Douglas's mother was the German-Scottish aristocrat, Vanda von Poellnitz.
3.
Norman Douglas was the manager of a local cotton mill; in his spare time, he was an archaeologist, researching the history of the Vorarlberg, and was an enthusiastic mountaineer.
4.
Norman Douglas's father died in a mountaineering accident, and five years later, his mother married a local artist, the painter, Jakob Jehly.
5.
Norman Douglas never mentioned the remarriage in any of his writings.
6.
Norman Douglas spent the first years of his life on the family estate, Villa Falkenhorst, in Thuringen.
7.
Norman Douglas was brought up mainly at Tilquhillie, Deeside, his paternal home in Scotland.
8.
Norman Douglas was educated at Yarlet Hall and Uppingham School in England, and then at a Gymnasium in Karlsruhe.
9.
Norman Douglas was fluent in German and English during his youth and later learnt French and Italian.
10.
Norman Douglas developed an interest in natural science as a child and began contributing articles to papers about zoology at the age of 18.
11.
Norman Douglas started in the diplomatic service in 1894 and from then until 1896 was based in St Petersburg.
12.
Norman Douglas was placed on leave after an alleged affair.
13.
Norman Douglas then moved to Capri, began dividing his time between the Villa Daphne there and London, and became a more committed writer.
14.
From 1912 to 1916 Norman Douglas worked for The English Review.
15.
Norman Douglas's novel They Went is a fantasy based on Breton folklore.
16.
Norman Douglas probably had a major hand in writing Orioli's autobiography, Adventures of a Bookseller.
17.
Norman Douglas published the first edition of his Almanac in a tiny edition in Lisbon.
18.
Norman Douglas returned to Capri in 1946 and was made a citizen of the island.
19.
Norman Douglas died in Capri, apparently after deliberately overdosing himself on drugs after a long illness.
20.
In 1916, Norman Douglas was charged with an offence against a 16-year-old boy at his home.
21.
In 1917, he was charged with the indecent assault of two boys but the case was dropped after Norman Douglas provided an alibi.
22.
Norman Douglas was granted bail and fled the country for Capri, Italy.
23.
Norman Douglas found his writing "at times as ruthless in its irony as Swift's" and "as warm and tender as Sterne's".
24.
Norman Douglas's last published work was A Footnote on Capri.
25.
In 1928, Norman Douglas published Some Limericks, an anthology of more-or-less obscene limericks with a mock-scholarly critical apparatus.