Snails in LiteratureSnails,although they are such beautiful creatures,are not often the object of stories or books. There are some poems written about them,which you can find on the poetrypages. But few writers have made them appear in a book.Ofcourse i'm not talking about childrensbooks, because there are quite a few books with stories about snails or slugs for children.
I know of only two writers who have stories about snails:Patricia Highsmith has two stories: The snailwatcher and The quest for blank Claveringi.Virginia Woolf has a short story featuring snails. Shakespeare mentioned snails in some of his works,the relevant parts are here: Shakespeare in snails. I have tried to get permission to put parts of Highsmith's stories here.But the rights were to expensive for me, so you have to buy that book(Eleven)yourself.
Virginia Woolf. Lewis Caroll:Alice in Wonderland,Sylvia and Bruno William Shakespeare Hans Christian Andersen:The snail and the rose-tree. various others A Vietnamese folktale St.Francis and the snail A Japanese story of a snail and a badger
William Cowper Richard Lovelace Marianne Moore:To a snail John Bunyan:Upon a snail Andrew Roberts John DonneTo Sir John Wotton Alan Dixon:Snails and Reliquaries Elizabeth Bishop:The giant snail(link to the poem at www.poetryconnection.net) Nathaniel Cotton:The snail and the gardener John Gay:The butterfly and the snail The snail and the drone The wasp and the snail
Lewis Carroll The further off from England, the nearer is to France Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
William Cowper I would not enter in my list of friends, Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path, But he has the humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live
Harriet Beecher Stowe A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell