Literary Pilgrimages

Hmm..where to put this? Travel or Reading Room?

My family always laugh at me because whenever we travel I have to make little sidetrips to see the homes or graves of authors, settings of stories, or places where film versions of books were shot, etc.

I love it.  They accept it.  Sometimes they enjoy it as much as I do.

Does anybody else do this?  I'd love to hear your stories of literary pilgrimages, whether large or small.  England, America, or anyplace else.  I'd love to hear about places that are fantastic, as well as places that didn't end up to be worth the effort.  Keats' House?  Walden Pond?  Hogwarts?  The pub in Penzance that appears in the opening chapter of Treasure Island?

The more the better...

Yes!!!!!

I don't live too far from Laugharne, so I've been to see Dylan Thomas's boathouse many times. And, of course, have had a glass of whisky at Brown's, his local pub. Oh, and Virginia Woolf spent a couple of holidays here in my village - staying in the upstairs of a house that now belongs to a friend of mine. She is supposed to have written The Waves here.

In the US, my mother and I often planned autumn trips to see various literary sites - usually in conjunction with some leaf-peeping. Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott, etc. And, as a child, I was dragged around every house Charles Dickens ever lived in in London!

The pub in Penzance that appears in the opening chapter of Treasure Island?

I didn't know about that one!! But, since I spend a lot of time in Cornwall, I'll have to check it out. We've done all the Daphe du Maurier, John Betjeman and Virginia Woolf stuff. There are also lots of Brontë (Branwell) connections in Penzance - when he was a child, my boyfriend used to live in the Brontës' uncle's house!

(edited because a diaeresis is always worth the extra effort!) 

The pub in Penzance is called Admiral Benbow.  Quirky and atmospheric.  It's in a good pirating location, and is filled with relics the owner has brought up from his scuba diving trips.

We live in Brontë land here!  And love 'em or hate 'em -- it is amazing that all those women in one family became writers of some note out of a little backwater like Haworth.  And I've done the 7-mile round-trip walk up to Top Withens, which is believed to have been Emily's inspiration for Wuthering Heights -- and it's totally windy & desolate like in the book.

I've done some of the Wordsworth trail in the Lake District.

Also, a dear friend of mine has traveled in England before specifically on John Betjeman & Philip Larkin pilgrimages.

Plus, I really liked that pub near Hampstead Heath in London, that has several literary connections including Byron, Shelley, Keats & Dickens:

http://www.pubs.com/pub_details.cfm?ID=240

I'd LOVE to do something like that!  Sadly, my past travels haven't really lent themselves to any authors' homes or haunts.  I'll have to put that on my To Do list!

We stayed in Robert Louis Stevenson's home when we were in Edinburgh for a week in October.  It was lovely and so much fun.  The pub called the Hung Drawn and Quartered is right across from my office (there's some literary reference to Samuel Pepys there?).  And in Dublin we did the Authors Museum (can't recall its name) which was well worth it. 

YAY!   

Thanks for the great suggestions so far!

I haven't done any of these yet (!) except we did walk part of the Wordsworth trail this summer.  My two kids played Harry Potter with sticks for wands the whole way, so my memory of the view down onto Grasmere is linked to shouts of "Flipendo!"

I will save these for notes for future expeditions!  I can easily see a Dylan Tomas run sometime soon.

Has anybody been to the pub in Oxford where C.S. Lewis used to meet J.R.R. Tolkien and the rest of their club to read aloud their works-in-progress?  Is it worth a visit?

I took my little Potter-fans to see the cloisters in Gloucester cathedral where they filmed the corridors of Hogwarts and they loved it.  I was thinking when in Oxford to take them to the Bodleian library because it was used as the Hogwarts library.  Lest any Oxford students come down on me like a ton of bricks, let me say that they know how to behave in a library.  Anybody know of any other good Harry Potter locations?

Anybody know of any other good Harry Potter locations?

'Hogwarts Castle'?  http://www.alnwickcastle.com/

We had a wonderful long weekend holiday in the Alnwick area over the August bank holiday weekend this year.  There wasn't much literary about it apart from 'Hogwarts Castle' -- but there were certainly many amazing things to see & do around there (and good family stuff!).  There is a HUGE used bookstore in Alnwick also - on the literary front, btw.

  Anybody know of any other good Harry Potter locations?

London Zoo Reptile House where the snake talked to Harry.  

I like to do that too. When we were in Ireland, I was so excited to go to all the places mentioned in the Princes of Ireland series.

I've been to almost all the places where Laura Inglass Wilder lived.  The dugout house where they lived on Plum Creek was still there when I was a kid, but I am not sure if it is now.

I also got to help save her house in Missouri, I was on a team fighting forest fires near by.

Thomas Wolfe and O. Henry are buried in what was my local cemetery when I lived in Asheville.  I used to jog there every day and always stopped to pat their headstones. 

Has anybody been to the pub in Oxford where C.S. Lewis used to meet J.R.R. Tolkien and the rest of their club to read aloud their works-in-progress?  Is it worth a visit?

We went last summer and I say it's worth a visit if you're going to Oxford.  The information in the back on the walls (in the area that looks like a new addition) was very interesting, but definitely sit in one of the front rooms with the fireplaces.

If you go to Ripon Cathedral in Yorkshire you can see some of the carvings that inspired Lewis Carroll in his writings of Through the Looking glass :-) Apparently his father was the archdeacon of Ripon Cathedral at some point! So Carroll spent a fair amount of time in Ripon.  It's pretty neat!

My MIL is a major Robert Frost fan, she goes to New England a few times a year and does the Frost tour. I hope to take my son to Great Missendon to the Roald Dahl museum in a few years.