Bath is simply stuffed full of literary connections, both novelists and poets. There are so many writers, some I have read and loved; others I have only just discovered and am looking forward to reading.
Jane Austen is probably Bath's most famous resident, and 2025 is the 250th anniversary of her birth. It was simply splendid to be in Bath during the celebrations and explore a city which features so often in her novels. Bath inspired both Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Catherine Morland and Anne Elliot regularly frequent the Pump House as well as the Assembly Rooms. It was delightful to follow in their footsteps. We also enjoyed lunch in the Jane Austen Centre which is just a few doors down from 25 Gay Street where Jane, Cassandra and their mother stayed in 1805.
Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley lived at 5 Abbey Churchyard, the house is now Sally Lunn's Tearoom.
The Shelley's time in Bath was tainted by tragedy and it is probably this which shaped the style and atmosphere of her most famous novel.
Both Charles Dickens and Tobias Smollett wrote biting satires about Bath. Dickens in The Pickwick Papers and Smollett in The Adventures of Roderick Random. Smollett paints the city as fashionable but shallow - a spa town teeming with fortune hunters and hypochondriacs.
Bath features in both Georgette Heyer's Regency Romances as well as her Detective fiction. I have been inspired to read and re-read some of her Romances and think the first one I read will be Bath Tangle.
I have always loved Heyer's novels and our recent visit to Bath has rekindled my interest in her writing.
Amongst writers I have never read are Anna Seward, Mary Chandler, Christopher Anstey and Jane Bowdler. I have been inspired to purchase Bowdler's Poems and Essays, as well as Poems of Mary Chandler.
Mary Chandler sounds fascinating, she was closely acquainted with Alexander Pope and Samuel Richardson, and her poems apparently capture the witty, satirical and social atmosphere on Eighteenth Century Bath. I'm looking forward to finding out more.
I'm also seeking out a copy of Christopher Anstey's The New Bath Guide, or Memoirs of the B-N-R-D Family. From what I have read it seems to be an hilarious satire of fashionalbe Bath life.
There are so many other novelists and poets with links to Bath and in Persephone Books I purchased a pamphlet which claims that there are 47 authors over 3 centuries linked with the city. I'm looking forward to exploring more.