Hi and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this fascinating book…..

Literary Landscapes: the Real-Life Settings of the World’s Favourite Fiction

Literary Landscapes draws together those well-loved authors who are synonymous with a place and time, where landscape is as central to the tale as any character, and just as easily recognized

DAPHNE DU MAURIER’S REBECCA

FOWEY, CORNWALL, ENGLAND

This gothic drama of jealousy and suspense, narrated by Maxim de Winter’s wife, traces the newly-weds’ return to her husband’s ancestral home on the south Cornwall coast, and the narrator’s growing obsession with Maxim’s dead wife, Rebecca.

Ella Westland’s entry on Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca explains how the author fell in love with Fowey’s harbour as a 19 year old girl. Indeed, she got her inspiration for Manderlay, the ancestral home of the de Winters from the overgrown estate of Menabilly on the headland above Polridmouth Cove where she enjoyed . Daphne Du Maurier had grown up in Hampstead and been sent to finishing school in France, but in Cornwall she relished the “freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone”.

“It proved wonderfully apt that the runaway success of Rebecca and its film adaptation enabled Daphne to make Menabilly her home in 1943.”

Publication details:

Literary Landscapes: the Real-Life Settings of the World’s Favourite Fiction

General editor John Sutherland

Published 25 October, £25 hardback Modern Books

LITERARY LANDSCAPES

Celebrating the most memorable realist landscapes in classic and contemporary fiction

Literary Landscapes draws together those well-loved authors who are synonymous with a place and time, celebrating Hardy’s Wessex, Joyce’s Dublin and Du Maurier’s Cornwall. It comes right up to date with recent bestsellers, such as Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize winning The Luminaries, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. Its charm lies in the way these favourites are interspersed with the unfamiliar, providing much to explore.

Led by John Sutherland, a team of specialist literary critics have contributed individual essays on over 70 literary novels where landscape is as central to the tale as any character, and just as easily recognized. Entries are beautifully illustrated with archive material, original artworks, maps and photographs. International in breadth and scope, Literary Landscapes is an enchanting read that book lovers will not be able to resist dipping into.

Purchase link

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Literary-Landscapes-Charting-Real-Life-Favourite/dp/1911130773/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540412248&sr=8-1&keywords=literary+landscapes

Fancy winning a copy?

Follow @modernbooks and tweet your own favourite #LiteraryLandscape for a chance to win a copy of Literary Landscapes.

Some stories couldn’t happen just anywhere. As is the case with all great literature, the setting, scenery and landscape are as central to the tale as any character, and just as easily recognised. Literary Landscapes: Charting the Real-Life Settings of the World’s Favourite Fiction delves deep into the geography, location and terrain of all our best-loved literary works and looks at how setting and environmental attributes influence storytelling, character and our emotional response as readers.

Led by John Sutherland, a team of specialist literary critics have contributed individual essays on over 70 literary novels. Entries are beautifully illustrated with archive material, original artworks, maps and photographs.

Literary Landscapes is published by Modern Books

£25 hardback, 25 October 2018

Entries from the UK only Closing date 31 October 2018