My internet friend Emily put me onto this great article via her blog, RosieSaysBlog.  Jason Diamond, over at Flavorwire, a site I love, recently published a list of the 50 Places Every Literature Fan Should Visit.  I’m a bit of a literary groupie, as readers of this blog will know, so I was eager to see how many of the list I’d been to, since I’m fascinated by the environments in which writers produce their great work.

Not surprisingly, I’d visited some of the English ones, Jane Austen’s home and the Bronte Parsonage, as well as others not on the list. But, shockingly, I had never been to the Charles Dickens House. And I’m a big Dickens fan.

In the US, I’ve been to the Mark Twain house, Ernest Hemingway’s house in Oak Park, IL, and the one in Key West (not on the list), Emily Dickinson’s house, the Algonquin Hotel and Charles Scribner’s bookshop – where I actually bought books before it closed down. And I’ve visited the La Fonda Hotel, (not on the list) in Taos, N.M, where D.H Lawrence’s ‘Forbidden art’ paintings can be seen.

I went to Victor Hugo’s house in Paris in December, (not on the list), but have never been to Balzac’s house (on the list). I have, however, sat in the very same chair that Scott Fitzgerald sat in at the Deux Magots cafe in Paris (on the list). Well, it might have been the very same chair…

But there are so many other places I now want to see. Check out the article out and let me know of any literary places you recommend. There are plenty for me to be going on with, but some of them are in Russia, or other far-flung places, so probably aren’t on my horizon for a while.