Samuel Johnson by Joshua ReynoldsBlack Cultural Archives
London
There's little doubt that London is one of the major literary capitals of the world. Samuel Johnson once said of the city: ‘Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford’. He was a man who knew a thing or two about words.
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All the world's a stage, of course, but London's where William Shakespeare's plays were performed. Click and drag to explore this reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the original site, the south bank of the Thames.
LIFE Photo Collection
Dublin
Just a short hop from the UK, Dublin is another city that oozes the written word. Three of Ireland’s four Noble Prize for Literature winners lived in the city, including Samuel Beckett and George Bernard Shaw. Other famous literary Dubliners include James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Johnathan Swift – the list goes on.
In fact, few cities in the world can compete with Dublin's sheer number of literary greats. Home to a wit and imagination like few other places, it’s little wonder Dublin was designated a UNESCO City of Literature in 2010. Literary attractions include the Dublin Writers Museum, the James Joyce Library, Trinity College’s Old Library and the Book of Kells.
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Click and drag to explore the grounds of Trinity College, Dublin, here.
P. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. 1869-1930.LIFE Photo Collection
Edinburgh
If there is a city that can match Dublin for word power per square mile, then it’s Edinburgh. The first city to be given UNESCO City of Literature status in 2004, the list of authors from Auld Reekie is very impressive. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Muriel Spark and more recently, Irvine Welsh, were all inspired to write here.
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Visit the Scott Monument, a 200-foot-tall Gothic masterpiece dedicated to the writer of The Lady of the Lake and Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott. There’s also Makar’s Court, an evolving literary monument to Scotland’s most talented wordsmiths.
Boulevard Montmartre, Spring (1897) by Camille PissarroThe Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Paris
For much of the last three centuries, if you wanted to be taken seriously as a writer, you simply had to move to Paris. Homegrown talent includes big hitters such as Voltaire, Proust, Zola and Balzac but countless other émigrés have found their way to the city too. In the 1920s a whole generation of American writers set up camp in Paris, including Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Generation after generation of writers have found the city’s uniquely bohemian atmosphere, leafy boulevards and high culture an inspiration for literary genius. Visit a replica of Proust’s bedroom at the Musée Carnavalet or pay your respects to a whole army of legendary writers at the Cimetiére du Pére-Lachaise or Cimetiére du Montparnasse.
Portrait of A.S.Pushkin (1827) by Orest KiprenskyThe State Tretyakov Gallery
Saint Petersburg
Both the inspiration and setting for a huge number of literary classics by authors such as Pushkin and Gogol, and with a choice of literary museums to explore, Saint Petersburg is a city that lives and breathes the written word.
In Saint Petersburg you can visit the prison that inspired the poetry of Akhmatova, step inside Pushkin’s house or visit the small apartment where Dostoevsky set out on his literary journey.
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Here's Dostoevsky's former apartment, now the Dostoevsky Museum.
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Want to explore more? Step inside the Apartment Museum of Fyodor Dostoevsky in Moscow, here, using the arrows to look around, or discover more Russian literature museums.
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