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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Implements
There is something unsettling and indecorous about thinking about the chair as the ground of writing – something altogether too reminiscent, as Simon Goldhill has put it, of the writer’s buttocks. The paraphernalia of writing which connects hand and … Continue reading
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Tagged Allan Bank Grasmere, Ben Jonson, Dorchester County Museum, Edmund Spenser, history of reading, James Joyce, James Joyce Centre Dublin, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary museums, literary pilgrimage, literary tourism, literary tourist, love of literature, Mary Arden, National Trust, Nicola Watson The Author's Effects, Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations, Simon Goldhill, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth
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Chairs
The case of Burns’ desk suggests that the desk, however authentic, is not always adequate as the imagined ground of writing. Sometimes the chair will take the imaginative weight instead. Here are four ‘writer’s chairs’ that test that hypothesis. … Continue reading
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Tagged A la recherche du temps Perdu, A.L. Kennedy, Anne Hathaway, Cowper-Newton Museum, history of reading, Johann von Goethe, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary museums, literary pilgrimage, literary tourism, literary tourist, love of literature, Marcel Proust, Musée Carnavalet, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nicola Watson The Author's Effects, Olney, Paris, Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Gartenhaus, The Task, The Way by Swann’s, Weimar, William Cowper, William Shakespeare
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Desks
Imagining ‘an author’ means first of all imagining them as a body, and then in a landscape, and then ‘at home’. It also entails imagining the origin and act of writing. This has resulted in the fetishization of writers’ … Continue reading
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Tagged Alexandre Dumas, Alloway, Alphonse de Lamartine, ‘To a Mouse’, British Library, Charlotte Brontë, Chawton Cottage, George Sand, Haworth Parsonage Museum, history of reading, Jane Austen, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary museums, literary pilgrimage, literary tourism, literary tourist, love of literature, Nicola Watson The Author's Effects, Pride and Prejudice, Robert Burns, Victor Hugo
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Entrances
Now for four entrances and one escape-hatch. For a writer, a door is desirable because it shuts (one hopes) everyone out. As Alexander Pope wrote, ‘Shut, shut the door, good John! Fatigu’d I said,/Tie up the knocker, say … Continue reading
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Tagged 17 Gough Square, Alexander Pope, Dove Cottage, Elizabeth Gaskell, Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, Grasmere, Haworth Parsonage, history of reading, Howarth Parsonage Museum, Ile St Pierre Switzerland, Jane Eyre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johnson’s cat, Life of Charlotte Brontë, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary museums, literary pilgrimage, Literary Reminiscences, literary tourism, literary tourist, love of literature, Napoleon, Nicola Watson The Author's Effects, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Rydal Mount, Samuel Johnson, Thomas de Quincey, William Wordsworth
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Cradles of Genius
What is it about birthplaces? All writers have at some point been born, of course, and born in a particular place too, but not all births and birth-places are celebrated. Very few authors are helpfully imagined as babies; one … Continue reading
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Tagged Alloway, Brantwood, David Garrick, history of reading, James Boswell, John Ruskin, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary museums, literary pilgrimage, literary tourism, literary tourist, love of literature, Mark Twain, Missouri, Nicola Watson, Nicola Watson The Author's Effects, Robert Burns, Samuel Clemens, Samuel Johnson. Lichfield, Shakespeare, Stratford-Upon-Avon
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Series 3: Inspirations
Vaucluse This is the source of the river Sorgue, for many hundreds of years regarded as a natural wonder. Of a startling aquamarine hue, it bursts from a cavern at the base of a great white limestone cliff which stands … Continue reading
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Tagged Alice in Wonderland, ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’, Boar’s Hill, Cockermouth, Colin Dexter, Francesco Petrarch, Grasmere, Hawkshead, history of reading, Inspector Morse, J.R.R. Tolkein, Lake District, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary pilgrimage, literary tourism, literary tourist, love of literature, Lyra’s Oxford, Lyrical Ballads, Matthew Arnold, Napoleon, Nicola Watson The Author's Effects, Northern Lights Trilogy, Oxford, Philip Pullman, Recollections of the Lake Poets, river Sorgue, Rydal, Scholar-Gipsy, The Book of Dust, The Lord of the Rings, The Prelude, Thomas de Quincey, Vaucluse, William Hazlitt
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At Melrose Abbey (preferably) by Moonlight
Melrose is a pretty town on the Tweed, although the Youth Hostel where we stayed for reasons of economy is very spartan indeed. We were there to visit the Abbey, preferably by moonlight (I’ll explain in a minute). In the … Continue reading
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Tagged A Tour in Tartanland, A Transatlantic Tour, Henry Blake McLellan, history of reading, J.M.W. Turner, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary museums, literary pilgrimage, literary tourism, literary tourist, love of literature, Melrose Abbey, Melrose Abbey: Moonlight, Nicola Watson James Watt and Dale Townshend 'Writing the Ruined Abbeys of Netley Tintern and Melrose' in Writing Britain's Ruins ed. Michael Carter Peter N. Lindfield and Dale Townshend, Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Thomas Moore, William Wordsworth
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Shakespeare’s Verona
Shakespeare’s Verona is a true curiosity for the literary tourist because it is so much the product of wishful thinking. It is extremely unlikely (despite some pleasant speculation) that Shakespeare ever went to Italy; there is certainly no evidence … Continue reading
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Tagged history of reading, Italy, Jacques Augustin Galiffe, Jane Waldie, John Murray, Juliet’s Tomb, literary landmark, literary landscape, literary museums, literary pilgrimage, literary tourism, literary tourist, Lord Byron, love of literature, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Nicola Watson 'At Juliet's Tomb' in Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet and Civic Life: The Boundaries of Civic Space ed. Silvia Bigliozzi and Lisanna Calvi, Romeo and Juliet, Samuel Rogers, Verona, William Shakespeare
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