What do you think?
Rate this book
Writers' houses: A literary journey in England,
First edition. The homes of Keats, Dickens, Samuel Johnson, Churchill and others. Illustrated with photographs of the homes. Ink inscription on free endpaper. ix, 102 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. small 4to..
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1968
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 1, 2015
"Of all the houses of famous people which the general public may visit, those of writers seem to stand in a class of their own."
So opens this romantic, lovely, eccentric book, that acts as tribute, archive and memento to the writers' houses of England. Covering just over 100 pages with substantial black and white illustrations, it takes a leisurely trip around houses which were open to the public: "We thought it would be a pleasant notion to visit most of the writers' houses which are open to the public in England in order to discover something of what they meant to their eminent owners, in terms of the work they did and the lives they lived in them, and to try to convey some impression that might transcend the guide-book."
Coupled with this beguiling introduction is an A-road based map suggesting the route which might be taken. It presumes that one is starting and returning to London, and directs the individual through High Wycombe and then up to Skipton and Ambleside, before returning to the South via Stratford-on-Avon and then to Nether Stowey, Taunton and finally back to London via Winchester.
The Hardwicks take a deliberate stance in their approach to their topic: "This was no purely cerebral jaunt ..." and argue passionately, though not overtly, for the memory of a literary world gone and departed from the world. They look only at houses in which "people had lived of their own volition" (a curious turn of phrase), and are struck repeatedly by the "deteriorating effect of time on the human countenance". Another strange, poignant, phrase this, and one which refers to the habit of many of the houses having portraits of the author at various points in their life, on display in the house.
The authors featured are predominantly masculine apart from Beatrix Potter, the Brontë sisters and Victoria Sackville-West. Potter is the only children's author mentioned; and in the chapter dealing with Sackville-West, there is a particularly poignant picture of her working desk - adorned with fresh flowers and a photograph of Virginia Woolf. (A brief note about this desk it is: "preserved as she left it" (41) - but of course, nothing is 'preserved' under such circumstances. Things are moved for cleaning, repair, dusting etc and then replaced. And when they are replaced, they will never be quite the same as before And so we have a desk as memory, as archive, as imitation of the desk that it once was - but never, quite, being it. This is not preservation, perhaps, it is more of an echo, a longing echo of what it once was.)
Throughout Writers' Houses, the Hardwicks take on a particularly mournful and heartfelt tone. It is an emotional book; powerful at points, and oddly surreal at others. It, as so many others of its genre also do, reveals more perhaps about the authors of the guide itself rather than the sites they are investigating. Sentences jar occasionally and err on the side of romantic conjecture ("Subconsciously dissatisfied with life by the side of the earthy, too fertile Kate (she was already pregnant again, and miscarried with the shock of Mary's death), [Dickens] had idealized his young sister-in-law as perfect femininity".) It's strange to note (though perhaps not, when we pause to consider it) but ideas of fertility run through this book. The fields outside of Down House (Charles Darwin) are "fertile", Knebworth (Edward Bulwer Lytton) has a "gentile fertile landscape", whilst in stark comparison, the landscape around Haworth Parsonage (Brontë Sisters) is described as "bleak, remote, pitilessly harsh: a killing place." The parallels being drawn here between landscape and creativity, landscape and personal tragedy, landscape and style are unmistakable. This isn't just a journey to these houses. It's a journey to the author and the author's house is no longer just a house, but rather a transitional threshold that we must pass through as part of this journey.
So opens this romantic, lovely, eccentric book, that acts as tribute, archive and memento to the writers' houses of England. Covering just over 100 pages with substantial black and white illustrations, it takes a leisurely trip around houses which were open to the public: "We thought it would be a pleasant notion to visit most of the writers' houses which are open to the public in England in order to discover something of what they meant to their eminent owners, in terms of the work they did and the lives they lived in them, and to try to convey some impression that might transcend the guide-book."
Coupled with this beguiling introduction is an A-road based map suggesting the route which might be taken. It presumes that one is starting and returning to London, and directs the individual through High Wycombe and then up to Skipton and Ambleside, before returning to the South via Stratford-on-Avon and then to Nether Stowey, Taunton and finally back to London via Winchester.
The Hardwicks take a deliberate stance in their approach to their topic: "This was no purely cerebral jaunt ..." and argue passionately, though not overtly, for the memory of a literary world gone and departed from the world. They look only at houses in which "people had lived of their own volition" (a curious turn of phrase), and are struck repeatedly by the "deteriorating effect of time on the human countenance". Another strange, poignant, phrase this, and one which refers to the habit of many of the houses having portraits of the author at various points in their life, on display in the house.
The authors featured are predominantly masculine apart from Beatrix Potter, the Brontë sisters and Victoria Sackville-West. Potter is the only children's author mentioned; and in the chapter dealing with Sackville-West, there is a particularly poignant picture of her working desk - adorned with fresh flowers and a photograph of Virginia Woolf. (A brief note about this desk it is: "preserved as she left it" (41) - but of course, nothing is 'preserved' under such circumstances. Things are moved for cleaning, repair, dusting etc and then replaced. And when they are replaced, they will never be quite the same as before And so we have a desk as memory, as archive, as imitation of the desk that it once was - but never, quite, being it. This is not preservation, perhaps, it is more of an echo, a longing echo of what it once was.)
Throughout Writers' Houses, the Hardwicks take on a particularly mournful and heartfelt tone. It is an emotional book; powerful at points, and oddly surreal at others. It, as so many others of its genre also do, reveals more perhaps about the authors of the guide itself rather than the sites they are investigating. Sentences jar occasionally and err on the side of romantic conjecture ("Subconsciously dissatisfied with life by the side of the earthy, too fertile Kate (she was already pregnant again, and miscarried with the shock of Mary's death), [Dickens] had idealized his young sister-in-law as perfect femininity".) It's strange to note (though perhaps not, when we pause to consider it) but ideas of fertility run through this book. The fields outside of Down House (Charles Darwin) are "fertile", Knebworth (Edward Bulwer Lytton) has a "gentile fertile landscape", whilst in stark comparison, the landscape around Haworth Parsonage (Brontë Sisters) is described as "bleak, remote, pitilessly harsh: a killing place." The parallels being drawn here between landscape and creativity, landscape and personal tragedy, landscape and style are unmistakable. This isn't just a journey to these houses. It's a journey to the author and the author's house is no longer just a house, but rather a transitional threshold that we must pass through as part of this journey.
Displaying 1 of 1 review