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Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' was originally called 'The Fireman,' but he changed the title after learning the temperature at which paper burns.
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Additional insights we found via National Endowment for the Arts
Bradbury published a short story called "The Fireman" in a science fiction magazine in 1951 about a United States where firemen were censors, protecting their fellow citizens from literature’s harmful ideas.
Ballantine Books offered him a publication deal if he could expand the story into a complete novel, but suggested it needed a new title.
Bradbury eventually learned from a firefighter that paper burned at 451 degrees Fahrenheit and decided it would make for a perfect title.
Bradbury said that libraries were an integral part of his life, especially his childhood, and that works by L Frank Baum, Shakespeare, and Emily Dickinson changed the way he understood the world and himself.
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