Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West

Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West

by ShannonMcKennaSchmidt (Author), JoniRendon (Author)

Synopsis

In this travel guide for ardent readers, two book lovers team up to create an eclectic and infinitely browsable guide to literary landmarks in Europe and the United States. Divided into two sections, the book begins with broad thematic chapters: Author Houses and Museums, Literary Festivals and Walking Tours, and Hotels, Bars, and Restaurants where famed scribes sipped, supped and slumbered. From Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the Old Courthouse Museum immortalised in To Kill a Mockingbird. The second half of the book is devoted to ten in-depth explorations of author and place - peppered with still more interesting facts, cross-references, sidebars, pull-quotes, and reading suggestions, this book is an ideal bedside companion and browser's delight. Among the possibilities to ponder? Joining in a rousing rendition of Robert Burns' 'Auld Lang Syne' during a Burns' Night Supper, standing in the spot where The Maltese Falcon's Miles Archer met his match with a dangerous dame, morphing into Mr. Darcy or Lizzie Bennett for a promenade around Bath's Royal Crescent, walking the windswept moors that inspired the Brontes, and taking part in a Stella and Stanley Shouting Contest in the Big Easy. Whether it's checking into the Sun Valley hotel where Hemingway penned For Whom the Bell Tolls, or doing battle with the 400-year-old windmills in La Mancha, Spain, that Cervantes' Don Quixote famously mistook for oppressive giants, one thing is certain: for literary-minded wanderers, the combination of reading and travel is a heady mix - especially if you happen to be sipping a pint in the pub where James Joyce and his heroic everyman Leopold Bloom once did the same. Even celebrated writers felt the allure of following in the footsteps of the authors they admired, such as John Steinbeck, who once dreamed of making like Jack London and sailing across the Pacific on a freighter. Readers of "Novel Destinations" will discover a truism that Steinbeck well knew: 'No two journeys are alike' - whether the final destination lies between the pages of a favourite book or across the expanse of the open road ahead.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 15 Jun 2009

ISBN 10: 142620454X
ISBN 13: 9781426204548

Media Reviews
Want to explore more than 500 literary landmarks without leaving your living room? Then pull up an armchair and pick up a copy of Novel Destinations. --Tampa Tribune
Author Bio
Before becoming a freelance writer, Shannon A. McKenna held positions in marketing and promotions at several major publishing houses including Penguin, HarperCollins and, most recently, Simon and Schuster US. Jone Rendon's work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Continental, Pages, BookPage, The Writer and on Literarytraveler. com. She is a contributing writer at Bookreporter. com and FocusNews for Expatriates. She spent ten years in marketing and editorial in the book publishing industry including The Random House Trade Group, Holtzbrinck/St. Martin's Press, and Hyperion Books. She currently resides in London, England, where she chronicles her many adventures on her popular blog, TheReluctantAnglophile.com.