Saturday 4 March 2017

Literary Geography

The arcane science of literary geography involves visiting places like:

221B, Baker St;
the Reichenbach Falls;
Greystoke Castle; (see A Week Away II)
towns wrecked by the Wellsian Martians;
Joycean sites in Dublin;
Northampton in the footsteps of Alan Moore;
the building that was the Ministry of Truth in 1984, although not in 1984;
Hadrian's Wall.

Three of these places are connected to Poul Anderson because:

Sherlock Holmes lived at the Baker St address, died - then turned out to have survived - at Reichenbach and met Anderson's Manse Everard of the Time Patrol;

Poul and Karen Anderson's Gratillonius was stationed at Hadrian's Wall before he went to Armorica and became the last king of Ys.

In fact, we could also look for the site of Ys. The Andersons provide a map. These are places where real life and fiction are not far apart.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Ha! I actually did go to 221B Baker Street during one of my visits to London! And had some fun visiting the Sherlock Holmes museum there.

I think you could have included York Minster in your literary geography list. That cathedral is mentioned or seen more than once in Anderson's works, such as GENESIS.

Sean

Jim Baerg said...

"towns wrecked by the Wellsian Martians"

During the Covid lockdowns someone retraced the steps of the narrator of "War of the Worlds" through deserted parts of London. I saw the video not long after it was posted. Unfortunately a Google search now comes up with unrelated material.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

Something to keep in mind, taking note of the different locations mentioned in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, the next time I read it.

Ad astra! Sean