Explore the landscapes and places that inspired great novels! Each of the 25 essays in the book briefly introduces you to the location, the era, and the history behind the story. Accompanied by a color drawing of the location, these destinations become characters in their own rights, rising up from behind the scenes to take center stage. -- adapted from introduction

This 1895 volume visits the lesser-known literary haunts of such British writers as Dickens, Chaucer, Pope, Keats, Shakespeare, Carlyle, Byron, Eliot, the Brontës, and many, many more. Locations include places which inspired a particular author as well as spots shared by multiple groups such as Highgate, Lord Byron's tomb, Gray's country churchyard, Gad's Hill, childhood homes, and more.

When you think of your favorite bookstore, what comes to mind? Is it the physical space? Books stacked in rows and piled high, labeled with staff recommendations? Do you think of the owner who knows each of her customers by name and can always press into your hands the perfect book that you are sure to love? Or is it the intangible thing that draws you there: the anticipation of a new discovery, or the feeling of community or of being at home? The...

"Sometimes the setting of a novel is as important as the story-where would Dickens be without London, or Edith Wharton without New York? Who can Jamaica Inn and not want to visit Bodmin Moor, or enjoy Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency without wondering whether perhaps Botswana should be on your bucket list? Whether you have already decided on a destination and want to get a feel for the place and its history, or you are just...

It's often said that a good book takes us somewhere we've never been before, and here's the proof: a book-lover's Baedeker to more than 500 literary locales across the United States and Europe. Novel Destinations invites readers to follow in the footsteps of much-loved authors, discover the scenes that sparked their imaginations, glimpse the lives they led, and share a bit of the experiences they transformed so eloquently into print. If

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This book is the delightfully dark story of Sam Pulsifer, the accidental arsonist and murderer narrator who leads readers through a multilayered, flame-filled adventure about literature, lies, love and life. Growing up in Amherst, Mass., with an editor for a father and an English teacher for a mother, Sam was fed endless stories that fueled (literally and figuratively) the rest of his life. Thus, the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction, story...

Anna Quindlen first visited London from a chair in her suburban Philadelphia home--in one of her beloved childhood mystery novels. She has been back to London countless times since, through the pages of books and in person, and now, in Imagined London, she takes her own readers on a tour of this greatest of literary cities.

While New York, Paris, and Dublin are also vividly portrayed in fiction, it is London, Quindlen argues, that has always...

This book offers a detailed itinerary for actually 'walking' Sherlock Holmes. Beginning, of course, at Baker Street a series of walks takes in the well-known, as well as some of the more obscure, locations of London as traveled by Holmes and Watson and a gallery of unforgettable characters in the stories. Details of each location and the story in which it features are given along with other items of interest - associated literary and historical information,...

Follow in the footsteps of much loved authors, discover the landscapes that sparked their imaginations, and learn behind-the-scenes stories in this second edition of Novel Destinations. Across more than 500 literary locales in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, experience famous authors' homes, book festivals, literary walking tours, lodgings, restaurants, bars for bibliophiles, and much more.

Blending literature and travel, this book offers a look at 15 U.S. destinations featured in the works of famous writers. Designed as a guide to help avid bibliophiles experience, in person, the places they've only read about, award-winning journalist Terri Peterson Smith takes readers on lively tours that include a Mark Twain inspired steamboat cruise on the Mississippi, a Devil in the White City view of Chicago in the Gilded Age, a voyage through...