Category Archives: Uncategorized

Shakespeare’s Garden

In the grounds of Northwestern University, situated in Evanston north of Chicago, there is a smallish formal garden, bounded by high hedges, and furnished with stone seats, a sundial, and a wall-fountain. It is usually deserted; the odd elderly lady, … Continue reading

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Visiting Rousseau on the Île St Pierre

    © Tourismus Biel Seeland Another month, another author’s home. Those of you fond of mountains and lakes will be pleased to hear that we’re heading out of Geneva, and making our way to the Île St Pierre, for … Continue reading

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Series 2: Visiting Voltaire at Ferney

In 1764, the young James Boswell, already a confirmed celebrity hound, headed to Switzerland to visit two famous figures then living in the environs of Geneva: Rousseau, presently retired in the little village of Môtiers-Travers, and Voltaire, holding court at … Continue reading

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In Lyra’s Oxford

I suppose what I have been exploring in this series of literary adventures is the impulse to experience for real places that one first found through books. Poets’ graves seem to offer a temporal and physical limit to the slightly … Continue reading

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At Green Knowe

                        I’ve been thinking more about book illustrations and how they work to produce tourist effects, and remembering in particular another expedition I undertook with the children to the … Continue reading

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At Beatrix Potter’s House

  Today we’re away in imagination to Hill Top Farm, Cumbria, once home to children’s author Beatrix Potter. Of course, the children don’t care much about Beatrix Potter’s life; they care about the world of the books which is much … Continue reading

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Hardy’s Wessex

  We are making the best of that perennial curse, a daughter’s school project, by setting off into Dorset on a day-trip in search of Hardy’s Wessex, armed with a camera and dog-eared copies of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and … Continue reading

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Lorna Doone Country

Walking ‘in the footsteps of’ a famous author has long been a favourite past-time – and not just one of mine. Since at least the 1790s, when writers began to describe their favourite walks, visitors have retraced them. Rousseau’s descriptions … Continue reading

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At Loch Katrine

Off to Loch Katrine, in the footsteps, this time, of Scott. Scott was a great one for going to beautiful places, collecting quaint stories about them, and weaving them up into best-selling romances. The consequence was that his readers would … Continue reading

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At Haworth

Today’s literary scavenger-hunt takes me to Haworth, home of the Brontës, situated in West Yorkshire. Along with Walter Scott’s Abbotsford, the subject of my last post, Haworth is arguably one of the most important and exemplary writers’ houses of the … Continue reading

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