Welcome to my blog for the start of the #BlogTour for LITERARY LANDSCAPES: Charting the Real-Life Settings of the World’s Favourite Fiction. This is a follow-up book to the richly illustrated Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created. Deatils on how to win a copy are at the bottom of this post.
Literary Landscapes draws together those well-loved authors who are synonymous with a place and time, celebrating Hardy’s Wessex, Joyce’s Dublin and Du Maurier’s Cornwall. It comes right up to date with recent bestsellers, such as Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize-winning The Luminaries, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. Its charm lies in the way these favourites are interspersed with the unfamiliar, providing much to explore.
Led by John Sutherland, a team of specialist literary critics have contributed individual essays on over 70 literary novels where landscape is as central to the tale as any character, and just as easily recognized. Entries are beautifully illustrated with archive material, original artworks, maps and photographs. International in breadth and scope, Literary Landscapes is an enchanting read that book lovers will not be able to resist dipping into.
Some stories couldn’t happen just anywhere. As is the case with all great literature, the setting, scenery and landscape are as central to the tale as any character, and just as easily recognised. Literary Landscapes: Charting the Real-Life Settings of the World’s Favourite Fiction delves deep into the geography, location and terrain of all our best-loved literary works and looks at how setting and environmental attributes influence storytelling, character and our emotional response as readers.
Led by John Sutherland, a team of specialist literary critics have contributed individual essays on more than 50 literary worlds. Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of full-colour maps, archival material, photographs and illustrations, the landscapes are vividly brought to life, evoking all the sights and sounds of the original works.
A great way to remind you of favourites, or inspire your next book choice, what will you read next?
These are the landscapes that are in the book:
Romantic Prospects, Up To 1914
JANE AUSTEN Persuasion
ALESSANDRO MANZONI The Betrothed
HONORÉ DE BALZAC La Comédie humaine
EMILY BRONTË Wuthering Heights
CHARLES DICKENS Bleak House
VICTOR HUGO Les Misérables
LEO TOLSTOY Anna Karenina
THOMAS HARDY The Return of the Native
MARK TWAIN The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Kidnapped
AUGUST STRINDBERG The People of Hemsö
G. WELLS The War of the Worlds
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY Anne of Green Gables
WILLA CATHER O Pioneers!
Mapping Modernism, 1915–1945
H. LAWRENCE The Rainbow
SIGRID UNDSET Kristin Lavransdatter
EDITH WHARTON The Age of Innocence
JAMES JOYCE Ulysses
THOMAS MANN The Magic Mountain
VIRGINIA WOOLF Mrs Dalloway
SCOTT FITZGERALD The Great Gatsby
A. MILNE Winnie the Pooh
ALFRED DÖBLIN Berlin Alexanderplatz
ALBERTO MORAVIA The Time of Indifference
ISAAC BABEL Odessa Stories
LEWIS GRASSIC GIBBON Sunset Song
LAURA INGALLS WILDER Little House on the Prairie
WILLIAM FAULKNER Absalom, Absalom!
DAPHNE DU MAURIER Rebecca
ERNEST HEMINGWAY For Whom the Bell Tolls
JORGE AMADO The Violent Land
JOHN STEINBECK Cannery Row
Post-War Panoramas, 1946-1974
GERARD REVE The Evenings: A Winter’s Tale
NAGIB MAHFOUZ Midaq Alley
CAMILO JOSÉ CELA The Hive
RAYMOND CHANDLER The Long Goodbye
DYLAN THOMAS Under Milk Wood
YUKIO MISHIMA The Sound of Waves
FRANCOISE SAGAN Bonjour Tristesse
SAM SELVON The Lonely Londoners
GRACE METALIOUS Peyton Place
PATRICK WHITE Voss
ELSA MORANTE Arturo’s Island
CHINUA ACHEBE Things Fall Apart
HARPER LEE To Kill a Mockingbird
TARJEI VESAAS The Ice Palace
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV The Master and Margarita
JOHN FOWLES The French Lieutenant’s Woman
TONI MORRISON The Bluest Eye
TOVE JANSSON The Summer Book
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN The Gulag Archipelago
Contemporary Geographies, 1975–Present
ARMISTEAD MAUPIN Tales of the City
EARL LOVELACE The Dragon Can’t Dance
FERNANDO PESSOA The Book of Disquiet
PETER SCHNEIDER The Wall Jumper
JAY MCINERNEY Bright Lights, Big City
PATRICIA GRACE Potiki
MICHAEL ONDAATJE In the Skin of A Lion
LOUISE ERDRICH Tracks
TIM WINTON Cloudstreet
E ANNIE PROULX The Shipping News
NATSUHIKO KYOGOKU The Summer of the Ubume
THOMAS WHARTON Icefields
PATRICK MODIANO The Search Warrant
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFÓN The Shadow of the Wind
ORHAN PAMUK Snow
KATE GRENVILLE The Secret River
ELENA FERRANTE My Brilliant Friend
YAN LIANKE The Explosion Chronicles
ELEANOR CATTON The Luminaries
NEEL MUKHERJEE Lives of Others
MIGUEL BONNEFOY Black Sugar
LITERARY LANDSCAPES: Charting the Real-Life Settings of the World’s Favourite Fiction
General Editor: John Sutherland
Published 25 October 2018 – Price: £25 hardback, full-colour illustration
Available from all good bookshops. I would urge you to buy them from an independent bookshop if you can as this supports them, the publisher and of course the author with one purchase.
You could win a copy too: Follow @modernbooks and tweet your own favourite #LiteraryLandscape for a chance to win a copy of Literary Landscapes.
I’ve loved seeing about this book again and again on the blogs I read who are on the blog tour! And this has to go on my Christmas list.
They couldn’t get me a copy in time, but hopefully will have one soon. It looks beautiful. Have you seen this one too: https://thamesandhudson.com/writer-s-map-9780500519509