Literary Trails: British Writers in Their Landscapes [Hardcover]

Christina Hardyment (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000

From haunting remains of castles dotting the countryside to light-flooded stretches of coast, Britain's landscapes have inspired writers from Jane Austen and Daphne du Maurier to Virginia Woolf and Rudyard Kipling. Evocatively illustrated with paintings and photographs of sites made famous in classic books, Literary Trails invites readers to walk, drive, or sail through some of Britain's best-known literary landscapes, all of which have been preserved by the National Trust.

Author Christina Hardyment traces the route of Thomas Hardy's Tess across Wessex, wanders around the Lake District as Wordsworth did Alonely as a cloud," and follows the path of Alfred Lord Tennyson toward Tintagel in Cornwall in quest of the Arthurian legends. Maps and archival pictures illustrate each route, and photographs show the places as they are today, making Literary Trails both a pleasure for the armchair traveler and a practical guide for anyone planning a literary journey through Britain.

CHRISTINA HARDYMENT is a journalist, broadcaster, and author of several books, including Abrams' Gardens of the National Trust. She has long been an enthusiastic literary explorer, seeking out the houses, landscapes, and sites she first came upon in her reading. She lives in Oxford, England.

165 illustrations, 120 in full color, 16 maps, 83/4 x 95/8"

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810967057
• ISBN-13: 978-0810967052
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,446,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fine, if limited, look at how geography affects literature, February 17, 2001

By 

audrey (white mtns) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Literary Trails: British Writers in Their Landscapes (Hardcover)

This is a lovely book with fine photographs and text, and well-documented trails (some on foot, others by auto) to supplement your appreciation of a sound selection of Britain's finest authors.

Chapters document the geographic milieu of one or more authors and relate the relevance of sites that are found on the trails. For example, the Jane Austen chapter contains two trails, one in the area of Steventon, Hampshire, Jane's home her first 25 years, and another in Bath, a resort frequented by the Austen family and used to varying extent in all Austen's novels except "Pride and Prejudice".

Published by the National Trust, this book contains a gazetteer, bibliography, list of plates and a good index. Authors discussed include Austen, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hardy, Woolf, du Maurier, and Sayers. Sixteen trails are presented.

I have only two complaints about this book -- well, one complaint and one wish. The organization of the book is not intuitive and it is not apparent which literary figures are discussed. To some extent this is due to the constraint of having to organize by geography rather than, say, chronology, and one can always turn to the index; but while some chapters are obvious (Jane Austen in her Landscape, Thomas Hardy's Wessex) others leave one to guess (Muses and Mountains? The Scene of the Crime?) and because the index is generous one cannot tell if a person is really discussed or just mentioned. In addition, it would be nice to have a map of England that shows all of the trails so that one might see the geographic relation of these literary souls.

My wish reveals my enjoyment of this book, flaws and all -- I want MORE -- more maps, more photographs and pictures, more authors covered.

Well done, and certainly a fine addition to the collection of anyone who loves British literature.