Literary Tourism in the UK
If you enjoy exploring the homes and haunts of British writers this booklist will be invaluable. There are guidebooks which help the traveller find the places associated with their favourite writers, but many of the books written about literary pilgrimage are also great reads in themselves. The list includes lavishly-illustrated books which bring British writers' homes and gardens into your living room. Many writers' lives are intertwined, not least in the case of the family and friends known as the Bloomsbury group. Books about Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell explore these connections. This booklist is a companion to a talk given to the Dunedin Travel Club in June 2018.
GUIDEBOOKS and GOOD READS
A Reader's Guide to Writers' Britain. Sally Varlow
Treasured Island. Frank Barrett
Writers' Houses: Where Great Books Began. Nick Channer
The Oxford Guide to Literary Britain & Ireland. Daniel Hahn, Nicholas Robins, and Dorothy Eagle
Britain by the Book: A Curious Tour of Our Literary Landscape. Oliver Tearle
Literary Britain: A Reader's Guide to Writers and Landmarks. Frank Morley
Freud's Couch, Scott's Buttocks, Brontë's Grave. Simon Goldhill
Charles Dickens's England. David Wilkinson
Literary London. Eloise Millar and Sam Jordison
Literary London: A Street-by-Street Exploration of the Capital's Literary Heritage. Ed Glinert
Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City. Anna Quindlen
House of Fiction. Phyllis Richardson
Classic Literary Walks. Jeremy Evans
The Atlas of Literature. Edited by Malcolm Bradbury
A Literary Pilgrim: An Illustrated Guide to Britain's Literary Heritage. Edward Thomas
WRITERS’ HOUSES and GARDENS
The Writer's Garden: How Gardens Inspired Our Best-Loved Authors. Jackie Bennett
Gardening at Sissinghurst. Tony Lord
Planting Schemes from Sissinghurst. Tony Lord
Sissinghurst: Vita Sackville-West and the Creation of a Garden. Vita Sackville-West and Sarah Raven
Sissinghurst: An Unfinished History. Adam Nicolson (Vita's grandson)
Vita's Other World: A Gardening Biography of V. Sackville-West. Jane Brown
Virginia Woolf's Garden: The Story of the Garden at Monk's House. Caroline Zoob
Strawberry Hill : Horace Walpole's Gothic Castle. Anna Chalcraft and Judith Viscardi
A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey Into Adventure, Love, and Faith. Lori Smith
At Home with Jane Austen. Kim Wilson
Jane Austen at Home. Lucy Worsley
VITA, VIRGINIA and VANESSA
Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Suzanne Raitt
Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West. Matthew Dennison
A House Full of Daughters. Juliet Nicolson (Vita's granddaughter)
Bloomsbury at Home. Pamela Todd
Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity. Christopher Reed
The Sisters' Arts: The Writing and Painting of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Diane F. Gillespie
Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision. Frances Spalding
A Bloomsbury Canvas: Reflections on the Bloomsbury Group. Tony Bradshaw and James Beechey
Deceived with Kindness: A Bloomsbury Childhood. Angelica Garnett (Vanessa Bell's daughter)
Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939. Virginia Nicholson (Vanessa Bell's granddaughter)