Halleck's New English Literature. Reuben Post Halleck
by coach to Lynton (Lorna Doone), and the adjacent Lynmouth (where Shelley passed some of his happiest days and alarmed the authorities by setting afloat bottles containing his Declaration of Rights), by coach to Minehead, by rail to Watchet, driving past Alfoxden (Wordsworth) to Nether-Stowey (Coleridge) and the Quantock Hills, by motor and rail to Glastonbury (Isle of Avalon, burial place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere), by rail to Wells (cathedral), to Bath (many literary associations), to Bristol (Chatterton, Southey), to Gloucester (fine cathedral, tomb of Edward II), and to Ross, the starting point for a remarkable all day's row down the river Wye to Tintern Abbey (Wordsworth), stopping for dinner at Monmouth (Geoffrey of Monmouth).
After a start similar to the foregoing, the traveler should begin to make an itinerary of his own. He will enjoy a trip more if he has a share in planning it. From Tintern Abbey he might proceed, for instance, to Stratford-on-Avon (Shakespeare); then to Warwick, Kenilworth, and the George Eliot Country in North Warwickshire and Staffordshire.
Far natural beauty, there is nothing in England that is more delightful than a coaching trip through Wordsworth's Lake Country (Cumberland and Westmoreland). From there it is not far to the Carlyle Country (Ecclefechan, Craigenputtock), to the Burns Country (Dumfries, Ayr), and to the Scott Country (Loch Katrine, The Trossachs, Edinburgh, and Abbotsford). In Edinburgh, William Sharp's statement about Stevenson should be remembered, "One can, in a word, outline Stevenson's own country as all the region that on a clear day one may in the heart of Edinburgh descry from the Castle walls."
If the traveler lands at Southampton, he is on the eastern edge of Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Dorchester in Dorsetshire being the center. The Jane Austen Country (Steventon, Chawton) is in Hampshire. To the east, in Surrey, is Burford Bridge near Dorking, where Keats wrote part of his Endymion, where George Meredith had his summer home, and where "the country of his poetry" is located.
In London, it is a pleasure to trace some of the greatest literary associations in the world. We may stand at the corner of Monkwell and Silver streets, on the site of a building in which Shakespeare wrote some of his greatest plays. Milton lived in the vicinity and is buried not far distant in St. Giles Church. In Westminster Abbey we find the graves of many of the greatest authors, from Chaucer to Tennyson. London is not only Dickens Land and Thackeray Land, but also the "Land" of many other writers. We may still eat in the Old Cheshire Cheese, where Johnson and Goldsmith dined.
Those interested in literary England ought to include the cathedral towns in their itinerary, so that they may visit the wonderful "poems in stone," some of which, e.g., Canterbury (Chaucer), Winchester (Izaak Walton, Jane Austen), Lichfield (Johnson), have literary associations. For this reason, all of the cathedral towns in England have been included in the literary map.
REFERENCE LIST FOR LITERARY ENGLAND:
Baedeker's Great Britain (includes England and Scotland).
Baedeker's London and its Environs.
Adcock's Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London.
Lang's Literary London.
Hutton's Literary Landmarks in London.
Lucas's A Wanderer in London.
Shelley's Literary By-Paths in Old England.
Baildon's Homes and Haunts of Famous Authors.
Bates's From Gretna Green to Land's End.
Masson's In the Footsteps of the Poets.
Wolfe's A Literary Pilgrimage among the Haunts of Famous British Authors.
Salmon's Literary Rambles in the West of England.
Hutton's A Book of the Wye.
Headlam's Oxford (Medieval Towns Series).
Winter's Shakespeare's England.
Murray's Handbook of Warwickshire.
Lee's Stratford-on-Avon, from the Earliest Times to the Death of Shakespeare.
Tompkins's Stratford-on-Avon (Dent's Temple Topographies).
Brassington's Shakespeare's Homeland.
Winter's Grey Days and Gold (Shakespeare).
Collingwood's The Lake Counties (Dent's County Guides).
Wordsworth's The Prelude (Books I.-V.).
Rawnsley's Literary Associations of the English Lakes.
Knight's Through the Wordsworth Country.
Bradley's Highways and Byways in the English Lakes.
Jerrold's Surrey (Dent's County Guides).
Dewar's Hampshire with Isle of Wight (Dent's County Guides).
Ward's The Canterbury Pilgrimage.
Harper's The Hardy Country.
Snell's The Blackmore Country.
Melville's The Thackeray Country.
Kitton's The Dickens Country.
Sloan's The Carlyle Country.
Dougall's The Burns Country.
Crockett's The Scott Country.
Hill's Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends.
Cook's Homes and Haunts of John Ruskin.
William Sharp's Literary Geography and Travel Sketches (Vol. IV. of Works) contains chapters on _The Country of Stevenson, The Country of George Meredith, The Country of Carlyle, The Country of George.
Eliot, The Brontë Country, Thackeray Land_, The Thames from Oxford to the Nore_.
Hutton's Literary Landmarks of Edinburgh.
Stevenson's Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh.
Loftie's Brief Account of Westminster Abbey.
Parker's Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture.
Stanley's Memorials of Westminster Abbey.
Kimball's An English Cathedral Journey.
Singleton's How to Visit the English Cathedrals.
Bond's The English Cathedrals (200 illustrations).
Cram's The Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain (6 illustrations).
Home's What to See in England.
Boynton's London in English Literature.
GENERAL REFERENCE LIST FOR THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE[1]:
Cambridge History of English Literature, 14 vols.
Garnett and Gosse's English Literature, 4 vols.
Morley's English Writers, 11 vols.
Jusserand's Literary History of the English People.
Taine's English Literature.
Courthope's History of English Poetry, 6 vols.
Stephens and Lee's Dictionary of National Biography (dead authors).
New International Cyclopedia (living and dead authors).
English Men of Letters Series (abbreviated reference, E.M.L.)
Great Writers' Series (abbreviated reference. G.W.).
Poole's Index (and continuation volumes for reference to critical articles in periodicals).
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