London is the political capital of the United Kingdom, but it is also its literary capital. A proposal for some literary-themed walking tours in London. The literary places in London number in the hundreds. Let’s try to discover some of the most significant ones with these walking tours through the different districts of London.
William Shakespeare’s London
The beginning of William Shakespeare‘s career is linked to the Shoreditch district. This area, now renowned for nightlife, hosted an important monastery dedicated to St John the Baptist since the Middle Ages.
With the dissolution of religious orders by Henry VIII, in 1536 the monastery was cleared, becoming one of the so-called liberties: monasteries were not subject to normal laws, and this custom continued to apply in their areas even after they were no longer under the authority of religious orders. The liberties attracted two categories of people: those living on the fringes of the law and artists, who could not be censored here.
Thus, along the present-day Curtain Road (named after the curtain wall of the St John the Baptist monastery), two rival theatres arose: the Curtain Theatre and The Theatre. The Theatre was home to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the theatre company in which Shakespeare was both playwright and actor. The owner’s son, Richard Burbage, who was the lead actor, performed here the roles of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. When the lease on the site was about to expire, a dispute arose between the owners and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The theatre was temporarily closed and the company had to be hosted at the Curtain Theatre.
Burbage, fearing losing the theatre, organized a night-time team of men who dismantled it piece by piece and moved it to Southwark. And thus the Globe Theatre was born.
Globe Theatre
The area was chosen because it was outside the jurisdiction of the City, which forbade theatres. Next to the original Globe site, on the present-day Park Road, stood the rival Rose Theatre, whose foundations can be viewed via guided tours. Today it is possible to visit the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, a faithful reconstruction of the seventeenth-century theatre, which stands not far from the original, and perhaps experience the atmosphere of Elizabethan theatres by attending one of its summer performances.
Due to this vocation as a theatre district, many actors lived in Southwark. Their parish was Southwark Cathedral, originally the oldest Gothic church in London (9th century AD). Thus, about half of the actors listed in the First Folio, the first printed edition of Shakespeare‘s works, are recorded in the church registers, as is the Bard himself, to whom a monument inside is dedicated. Edmund Shakespeare, William’s brother and also an actor, is buried at Southwark Cathedral.
The Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia Districts: Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens
Not far from the British Museum is the district of Fitzrovia, historically associated with the group of bohemian artists who inhabited it at the beginning of the twentieth century. The most famous was Virginia Woolf, who lived between 1907 and 1911 at number 29 Fitzroy Square (where previously the playwright George Bernard Shaw had lived). Virginia Woolf, along with her brothers Thoby and Adrian, founded the Bloomsbury Group right in this house, an association of artists originally from the University of Cambridge and famous for their dissolute lifestyle.
There was a saying that identified this group: couples who live in squares and have triangular relationships. Indeed, the beautiful squares characterize this area, and Virginia Woolf also lived at number 46 Gordon Square and at number 52 Tavistock Square. In the latter apartment, she wrote some of her most famous works, including Orlando and The Waves.
The place where the area’s artists used to go to drink (almost never in moderation) was the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street. This pub was particularly popular between the twenties and forties of the twentieth century and counted among its regular customers George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, and the Satanist Aleister Crowley, who also invented a drink for this pub. Towards the end of the thirties, some artists preferred to frequent the nearby Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place. Both the Fitzroy Tavern and the Wheatsheaf are still very popular today, and one can still sense the atmospheres of their bohemian period.
In the beautiful Doughty Street, at number 48, is the Charles Dickens Museum, set in the only London house surviving among all those in which the writer lived. Here Dickens wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby and witnessed the death of his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, just seventeen years old. This episode, which disturbed him particularly, is recounted through the death of Little Nell in the novel The Old Curiosity Shop. In London, there are many places linked to the life and works of Dickens, and the Museum also organizes thematic walking tours in the locations of some novels.
The Chelsea Neighborhood: Oscar Wilde
The aristocratic Chelsea neighborhood has welcomed many artists and, naturally, among them there are also numerous writers. At number 34 Tite Street, between 1884 and 1895, Oscar Wilde lived and here wrote his masterpieces The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. However, this house also marked the beginning of his downfall: during a dinner held here, Wilde met his future lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The father, the Marquis of Queensberry, disgusted by the relationship, sued Wilde for indecency and the writer was sentenced and imprisoned and forced to sell the house to pay part of the legal expenses.
The most significant Chelsea street for its residents is Cheyne Walk. Its row of elegant houses overlooking the Thames has hosted many celebrities, including the painters Rossetti and Turner and the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Among the writers who have lived there are George Eliot (at number 4), Bram Stoker (at 27) and Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, who lived with his mother at number 118-119 (where the great painter JMW Turner had lived in the past) and then moved to the Carlyle Mansions, the condominium located between numbers 50 and 60, where poet TS Eliot and Henry James also lived. In his apartment in the Carlyle Mansions, Fleming wrote the first James Bond story, Casino Royale.
The Carlyle Mansions owe their name to a notable figure who lived until his death at number 24 Cheyne Walk, Thomas Carlyle, a 19th century Scottish writer and essayist. The Thomas Carlyle’s House, where Charles Dickens was a regular guest, is open to the public and is worth visiting to get an idea of what these beautiful townhouses looked like.
The British Library
Finally, a must-see destination for literature enthusiasts is the British Library, a true temple of knowledge. On the ground floor, there is an exhibition hall with some priceless treasures. Among literary works, and limiting ourselves to the writers mentioned in this article, stands out the Shakespeare First Folio, the first collection of all his works curated by some friends and colleagues of the Bard immediately after his death. Without this edition, eighteen plays would have been lost, including Macbeth and The Tempest. The prestigious Folio format was reserved for theological and historical works and is used here for the first time for a literary work.
One can also admire manuscripts by Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Ian Fleming, and a notebook with a draft of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, with a different ending from the published work.
The British Library exhibition spans many areas of knowledge. Alongside literature, there are autograph scores by great composers (including Handel, Mozart, and Mahler) up to the Beatles; there are maps, illuminated sacred texts, scientific and historical treatises, anatomical drawings by Michelangelo and Durer, and designs of stage machines by Leonardo da Vinci. There are also legal codes, including two of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta.
