Literary Locales: Brighton

This is a part of our “Literary Locales” series here at LT. Check out the first post in the series for more information.

“In Lydia’s imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised every
possibility of earthly happiness.”

What: Brighton, UK
Where: See above
Literary Connection: Regency hot-spot featured prominently in Pride and Prejudice
Recommended Reading: The aforementioned Austen, anything by Brighton-native Graham Greene, or a biography of the Prince Regent (also anything from this handy website on “Literary Brighton”)
Transgression: Possibility of running off with officers and disgracing your family is high.

Thanks in no small part to Jane Austen, I’ve had a bit of a hankering to see Brighton ever since I came to London last fall. This week, I finally made it down there and, while I did not see “the glories of all the camp,” I did at least get to see “that gay bathing place,” the English Channel, and check out the bizarre Pavilion, the kitschy arches and pier, and have some excellent eats. (Most notably, Scoop and Crumb, a bakery/ice cream parlour, was completely excellent.)

Literary Locales: Kensal Green Cemetery

This is a part of our “Literary Locales” series here at LT. Check out the first post in the series for more information.

What: Kensal Green Cemetery
Where: Harrow Rd, London W10 4RA
Literary Connection: Wilkie Collins, Trollope, and Thackeray (among others) are buried here
Recommended Reading: G.K. Chesteron’s “The Flying Inn” apparently mentions it and Collins’ The Woman in White seems appropriate for some reason. Alternately, anything about cemeteries, the undead, or Victorian London.
Transgression: A lot of the graves looked disturbed, so perhaps Victorians rising from the dead?

As the oldest of the “Magnificent Seven” Victorian cemeteries of London, Kensal Green understandably has a lot going for it. The “notable burials” page on their website goes through about six pages, listing their famous inhabitants by category (one of which is “scandal”!), and the cemetery itself is vast. But for our purposes, Kensal Green Cemetery is remarkable for the large number of literary luminaries buried in its grounds.

Literary Locales: Keats House

This is a part of our “Literary Locales” series here at LT. Check out the first post in the series for more information.

What: Keats House
Where: Keats Grove, Hampstead, London NW3 2RR
Literary Connection: Keats lived here (and met Fanny Brawne here)
Recommended Reading: “Bright Star,” undoubtedly, although he also wrote “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to a Nightingale” while living in this house
Transgression: Regency love thwarted by consumption!

I’m going to admit up front that I know very little about John Keats. I’m not a die-hard Keats fan nor do I hate the man; I’m just largely unaware. I enjoy the romanticism of his relationship with Fanny Brawne and I’m a Regency-lovin’ girl, but specificity about him is not part of my literary repertoire. (And you all know how I feel about poetry in general.) All the same, this past Sunday I discovered his house in Hampstead and took a turn about the place. And it was lovely.

Literary Locales: Hatchards Bookshop

This is a part of our “Literary Locales” series here at LT. Check out the first post in the series for more information.

What: Hatchards
Where: 187 Piccadilly, London, England
Literary Connection: Oldest surviving bookshop in London
Recommended Reading: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Clarissa looks in the Hatchards window)
Transgression: The danger of buying too many books?

Hatchards, founded in 1797, is the oldest surviving bookshop in London and the second oldest in the entire United Kingdom. I’d read glowing reviews of it and, loving bookstores as I do, felt compelled to take a walk down to visit it on Piccadilly. As promising as the façade was, I’m sorry to say the bookstore itself was a huge disappointment. I was expecting to step into some kind of old-fashioned, magical place, but really all I did was step into an old building with a wholly modern bookstore in it.

Literary Locales: Where Allen Lane Invented the Paperback

This is a part of our “Literary Locales” series here at LT. Check out the first post in the series for more information.

What: The Original Penguin Books H.Q.
Where: Vigo Street, London, England
Literary Connection: The first paperback was published here!
Recommended Reading: Anything by Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie as they were the first three authors to be published as paperbacks by Penguin
Transgression: Isn’t there something inherently saucy about the paperback in some respects?

As I wandered about Soho with my visiting mother looking for tea, we happened upon the above subtle plaque on Vigo Street. No one else on the street gave it a second glance and, truth be told, my eyes would have skimmed right over it as well where it not for that recognizable penguin figure set off in white at the bottom.

Literary Locales: The Literary Tourist Trap

As I’ve been traveling around thinking about which literary landmarks of London to visit, the inevitable literary tourist trap locales keep popping up as possibilities. I’m talking about places like the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street.

I’m torn about these pseudo-landmarks. I love that they are inspired by fiction, but I’m also wary. It seems almost Disneylandish to go to a place that has no real association with anything beyond print and see the words on the page made somewhat real.

Literary Locales: Église Saint-Sulpice

This is a part of our “Literary Locales” series here at LT. Check out the first post in the series for more information.

What: Église Saint-Sulpice
Where: Paris, France
Literary Connection: The Marquis de Sade was baptized here, Victor Hugo was married here, and the church has been occasionally featured in plays and literature, most notably in The Da Vinci Code.
Recommended Reading: Dossiers Secrets d’Henri Lobineau and Romanesque Churches of France by Peter Strafford
Transgression: Did I mention the Da Vinci Code connection?

The impressively monumental Église Saint-Sulpice is a beautiful and haunting chuch, particularly at twilight which is when I stumbled upon it. It’s the second largest church is Paris and is no doubt interesting on a number of architectural and historical levels.

But it’s impressive vastness and wonderfully eerie interior are not the reason I’m writing this up today. Rather, it is the sign erected next to the church’s famous gnomon, or meridian line, that made me truly love visiting this literary locale. The sign provided a wonderfully vivid interaction between life and literature such as are increasingly rare these days (think Victorians erecting a memorial statue to Dickens’ Little Nell upon her totally fictional demise). And this sign was a doozy:

Literary Locales: The Emery Walker House

Since I’m going to be abroad and in school for the next year or so, I won’t have much time for leisure reading but I will have lots of time (hopefully!) for literary sight-seeing. Therefore, welcome to the first installment of “Literary Locales,” wherein we visit some literary (and sometimes literarily transgressive!) sites. As with most of our series, guest bloggers are most welcome and should e-mail literarytransgressionsATgmailDOTcom if you have an interesting literary locale you’d like to share.

What: The Emery Walker House
Where: 7 Hammersmith Terrace, Hammersmith, London
Literary Connection: Home of renowned English fine press book-maker and type-creator
Recommended Reading: The Book Beautiful by Thomas Cobden-Sanderson; The Doves Press by Marianne Tidcombe
Transgression: Walker’s partner in printing destroyed Walker’s beautiful Doves Type by tossing it into the Thames!

Located in the Hammersmith area of London, the Emery Walker House is, as the name would suggest, where the Arts and Crafts engraver and printer Emery Walker lived there from 1903 until his death in 1933. Walker, with fellow book-maker and Arts and Crafts movement member Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, founded the renowned Doves Press in the early nineteenth century and personally worked to create the Doves Type.