ENGLISH WRITERS

0: Romantic and Victorian writers

Northern England: Wordsworth, Coleridge; The Brontë sisters; Elizabeth Gaskell.

1: Literary London

2: License

English Writers google map by Inma López is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Unported License.

3: Haworth

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This is the place where the Brontë sisters were born. Try to imagine what it would have been like to grow up in a place like this, surrounded by gravestones everywhere. Take a walk on the moors in search of Wuthering Heights. You might be lucky enough to encounter Cathy and Heathcliff's souls wandering around.
You can visit The Brontë parsonage, the house where Charlotte, Emily and Anne lived with their father and brother. This house has been turned into a museum.

Find out more about The Brontë sisters here:
The Brontë sisters

Some of their most important novels are:
"Wuthering Heights", Emily Brontë
"Jane Eyre", Charlotte Brontë
"Agnes Grey", Anne Brontë

The following photos were taken inside The Brontë parsonage and they give an idea of what life was like during their time:


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These clothes were worn by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, and this is the table where they probably started to write their most famous works (my hair stands on end!!!!)

4: Wuthering Heights

This is supposed to be the place where one of the greatest love and revenge stories ever written took place. People say you can still hear Heathcliff calling his beloved Cathy when the wind hauls. Look at the following photos and enjoy:


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Fuente, Pepa Botella

What stunning scenery! I can imagine Heathcliff wandering across the moors in search of Catherine's soul, lashing out with the following words:

Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

("Wuthering Heights", chapter 16, Emily Brontë).

5: Dove Cottage, Lake District

The Lake District is the place where Wordsworth was born (Cockermouth, Cumberland) and which inspired some of his best poems. He worked together with Samuel Coleridge for a while and Coleridge would visit Wordsworth at Dove Cottage on several occasions.

Together they published "The Lyrical Ballads". The first poem of this collection was Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", whose subject matter was the supernatural.

Unlike Coleridge, for Wordsworth it was in contact with Nature that the poet found the necessary inspiration to write. Maybe, if we have a look at the following photos we might understand why:


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Some of Wordsworth's most famous poems include "The Daffodils" or "Tintern Abbey". In both poems the subject matter is Nature, and in both poems Wordsworth deals with ordinary life.

Read "The Daffodils" here and look at the photo of the couch where he often lay in "vacant or in pensive mood":


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6: The Gaskells' House

Fuente, www.thisislondon.co.uk

Elizabeth Gaskell is by far the most persuasive and observant of the early Victorian novelists. She's the most memorable contemporary observer of Manchester. In her novels she described the lives of people in the busy streets of Manchester. "Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester", became a reminder to middle classes of the distress of the poor, which was to easy to ignore.

However, Elizabeth Gaskell's great industrial novel  is "North and South", which is also set in Manchester. This novel exploits the distinction between the rural south of England and the industrialised north. Margaret, the main character, is one of Gaskell's most intelligent heroines.
Her industrial novels have tended to overshadow her other two masterpieces, "Sylvia's Lovers" and "Wives and Daughters".

Some of her novels were serialized in the most important journals of the time. For example, "North and South" was serialized in Dickens' "Household Words".


Sale of a Riverbank by L.S. Lowry (Manchester, England)

7: Daresbury, Lewis Carroll's birthplace

Lewis Carroll was born in Daresbury village (famous for the stained glass Lewis Carroll Memorial Windows) and he lived here for the first 11 years of his life, from 1832 to 1843. He became the famous writer of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" when he was a lecturer at Oxford University.

Apart from being a writer, Lewis Carroll was also a mathematician, logician and a photographer. From a young age, he wrote poetry and short stories, but it was with "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" that he became widely known. Have a look at the following pages and find out more about this fantastic story:
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" glogster. Fuente, Inma López

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" webquest, to work on with 2nd cycle Secondary Education (Spanish system). Fuente, Inma López.

Lenny's Alice in Wonderland site, a fantastic webpage about "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lenny de Rooy.

Have a look at the following original illustrations of the book by John Tenniel:

8: Stratford upon Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace

Fuente, Màrcio Cabral de Moura (flickr)

This is the place where William Shakespeare was born, in April 1564. The day of his birth is uncertain, but he was baptised on 26th April, 1564.

At that time, Stratford-upon-Avon was a tranquil market town in a wooded valley, famous for its fairs. London was two days away on horseback or four days on foot.

Nowadays, Shakespeare is regarded as a universal genius, and his works are read and performed everywhere. Yet he started life as the son of a Stratford glover, given no more than an average education, but very curious about the world around him. In fact, town scenes, country customs and superstitions, the fairs and popular entertainments of his childhood, were his material together with tales of kings and noblemen.

Shakepeare is best known for his plays, but he also wrote poetry, and some of his sonnets are world famous.

His plays can be divided into three categories: comedies, tragedies and history plays.

Visit the following pages if you want to know more about William Shakespeare, as well as "The Globe Theatre" post on this map.

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's blog. Fuente, Inma López

"Romeo and Juliet" glogster. Fuente, Inma López

Elizabethan England, recommended page


Ford Madox Brown

"Oh Romeo,Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo", ("ROMEO AND JULIET" Act II, scene II)

9: Globe Theatre

Fuente, http://www.davidclaudon.com/Elizabethan/globe

"Elizabeth I is still Queen...
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is currently playing...
and we are in the crowd waiting to enter.
Do you have the penny it will cost to stand in the cockpit?"

The Globe was built by Richard Burbage in 1599, not far from The Rose, and Shakespeare became a householder, in other words owner of a share in the property. It was able to accommodate audiences of between two and three thousand.

At that time theatres were places of popular entertainment. Entrance to the standing area (the pit) only cost a penny. As for the seated places prices could go up to sixpence. Therefore, it was usual to find very varied audiences in the playhouses.

The Puritans regarded the theatres as places of ill-repute, because it wasn't strange to find pickpockets, prostitutes and beggers among the audiences. The Puritans regarded theatres as places no better than the brothels and, in fact, theatres were found outside the City Wall together with brothels and beer gardens. The area outside the city was regarded as dangerous. Nevertheless, crime wasn't greater than inside London. At the time, the capital was confined to the City, bordered by the Thames to the south and enclosed by a wall.

Going back to the Globe and concentrating on the actors, it's worth remembering the role of female actors. In the 16th century, women weren't allowed to perform on stage, so theatrical companies included five or six boys trained to play female roles until their voices broke. The future of these boy actors was thus very uncertain, although most of them were true professionals who had learnt singing, dancing, music, diction and intonation from a very early age. This might be the reason why Shakespeare's plays have fewer female than male characters.

Nowadays you can still enjoy the pleasure of seeing the performance of some of Shakespeare's greater works at The Globe Theatre. I highly recommend the standing area if you are fit enough to go through a three hour performance without sitting down.

Virtual tour of the Globe (worth a visit)

10: London, Charles Dickens

Fuente, http://www.dickens-literature.com/l_dickenspictures.html

Dickens is undoubtedly London's writer. He was the first great writer to tackle the problems of an urban civilization. His London became the great metropolis, the largest and richest, if not the most splendid, of European cities. He reflected London as a place of great contrasts in novels like "Oliver Twist" , "Little Dorrit" or "Our Mutual Friend". London is a place in which the only hope for the future lies in individual regeneration.

Fiction became for Dickens the way to make sense of a disordered world in which love and cruelty coexisted and tangled with each other.

Nowadays, when you visit London you can visit certain places which still recall passages of his novels. For example, in "David Copperfield", David Copperfield crosses Westminster Bridge looking for Emily. In "A Tale of Two Cities", Sydney Carton takes Charles Darney to a tavern (Olde Cheshire Cheese) in Fleet Street for dinner. Fleet Street is also known as "the press street", as this was the place where most of the journals of the time were situated, including those where Charles Dickens worked.

St George's Church is known as "little Dorrit's church" because she's baptised here. St James' Church is the place where Pip and Magwitch (the runaway convict) go to hide from the law.

Dickens' London is that of the fog, poverty, beggers, markets and graveyards.

"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds". (Bleak House, chapter 1, Charles Dickens)

You can also visit his house (Dicken's Museum) in London.