Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland

Writers in Britain (no less than those in any other part of the world) have often been influenced by the localities in which the have been born and grown up. There are whole mythologies built around the Brontes and Yorkshire, Hardy and the West Country, Dickens and London. But the influence actually goes further back than that. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, people from all over Europe flocked to Scotland, inspired by the writing of Walter Scott. Wordsworth and his friends almost single-handedly created a passion for the English Lake District which continues to this day. People queue up to peep into Dove Cottage, then go back home to houses ten times the size. Jane Austen has a museum devoted to her in Bath, because she brought the city to life so magnificently in her work, even though she only spent a brief period of her short life there... Read more >>

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