and probably don't need to know

The web is awash with lists of tweets from famous movie stars, famous sportsmen, famous politicians, famous rock stars, famous comedians and so on. But sadly there is a dearth of literary tweets by famous authors and playwrights. So to even up the imbalance a little, we have compiled a list of  the 10 greatest literary tweets on record:

1. “Out, damn’d Spot! out, I say!” ~ tweeted twice by Lady Macbeth while trying to put the dog out on a rainy Scottish night. (Macbeth – William Shakespeare)
2. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” ~ tweeted by T S Eliot after complaining about the desperate lack of coffee spoons at Starbucks. (The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock – T S Eliot)
3. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present.” ~ tweeted by Scrooge to explain why he wouldn’t be sending anyone Christmas presents in the holiday season. (A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens)
4. ” . . . every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.” Peter Pan wikileaking the secret of how to rid the earth of its plague of fairies. It provoked tens of thousands of “I don’t believe in fairies” tweets – setting a Twitter record. (Peter Pan – J M Barrie)
5. “My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.” Frankenstein’s monster vainly tweeting instructions to scientists around the world after failing to encounter a suitable mate on Match.com and eHarmony.com. (Frankenstein – Mary Shelley)
6. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ~ Hamlet letting Horatio know that he was a crap philosopher, via Twitter. (Hamlet, Prince of Denmark – William Shakespeare)
7. “Call me Ishmael.” ~ tweeted by Captain Ahab when trying to recruit crew to sail on the ill-fated Pequod in search of Moby Dick, the great white whale. (Moby Dick – Herman Melville)
8. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ~ Jane Austen’s most famous tweet in her long campaign against gay marriage among the landed gentry and aristocracy in the UK. (Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen)
9. “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest — Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” Pirates tweeting their record breaking achievement of standing 15 men on a single rib cage prior to making their submission to the Guinness Book of Records. (Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson)
10. “Off with his head!” ~ The Queen of Hearts’ immediately tweeted reaction, on hearing that Julian Assange and Wikileaks had revealed that the roses in her garden were being painted red. Records indicate that her tweet preceded by months noted tweets by various US politicians and pundits calling for the same. (Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll)

Any reader who can improve on this list is invited to do so – by comment, email or tweet.

See also: The 10 Most Important Tweets of All Time