Bring literature to life when you travel overseas, with our
guide to literary trips around the globe. We'll help you experience the best the world has to
offer.
1. Jane Austen
When it comes to soaking up the atmosphere of your favourite
books, Jane Austen fans have more to choose from than most.
You can enjoy free audio walking tours of Bath, where Austen
lived and set
Northanger Abbey
and
Persuasion
, or visit her house at Chawton, where she wrote
Emma
. And there's always the option of looking up the
filming locations of your favourite adaptations -
Groombridge Place, Basildon Place and Wilton House are all
popular for this.
2. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
This best-selling novel by Louis de Bernieres, about an
Italian captain and the daughter of a local physician, has
already inspired countless readers to visit the beautiful
island of Kefalonia (which you may see spelt in a number of
different ways). The film adaptation, which was shot on the
island itself, was a let-down for many, so it's more a
case of soaking up the general atmosphere than spotting
specific locations.
3. Ulysses
Even if you've never actually made it all the way
through this challenging but great novel, visiting Dublin
- which Joyce himself famously hated - really
helps bring it alive. Ideally you'd visit on
'Bloomsday' (16
th
June, the anniversary of the day on which the novel takes
place), but whenever you go, you'll find a surprising
number of the novel's churches, banks and public
buildings still intact.
4. Ernest Hemingway
Fans of Hemingway have a lot of locations, including France,
Spain and Cuba, to choose from. The author's home in
Key West, Florida, is open to the public, and is a good
place to start. It was a wedding present from his
wife's uncle, and where Hemingway wrote some of his
best-loved work.
5. Dostoevsky
Although born in Moscow, the author of
Crime and Punishment
and
The Idiot
is inextricably linked with St Petersburg, where he was
first sent to study aged 17. And it's here you can see
where the author was arrested, imprisoned, married and
buried. The Dostoevsky museum is in the apartment where the
author spent the last two years of his life, and wrote his
greatest novel -
The Brothers Karamazov.
