SOUTHAMPTON AND HAMPSHIRE LITERARY HERITAGE

FRESHERS GUIDE

SOUTHAMPTON AND HAMPSHIRE LITERARY HERITAGE Southampton and Hampshire have many links to plot Austen allows herself the space necessary internationally celebrated writers and poets, those to comment on and critique the role of women in who created the foundation for literature through society. Visiting Jane Austen’s House Museum in their classic novels and emotive poetry. Some Chawton, Hampshire, is an experience in itself; writers used Hampshire as inspiration for writing being able to immerse yourself in the place where and others were born and lived in the county. Austen published four major novels is enough to inspire the majority of visitors. Although Jane CHARLES DICKENS Perhaps one of the most famous authors to come out of the Victorian Era, and the bane of English students from GCSE to A level and beyond, Charles Dickens is perhaps more associated with London’s Austen is a clear representative of Hampshire’s literary heritage, she is also a national literary icon famed for her engaging, heartfelt and witty narratives. KAY MILLER East End. Most of his novels detail the plight of the poorer class and he himself was known to walk JOHN KEATS around Whitechapel and mingle with the lives of Although born in Moorgate, London, and spending those he wrote about in his works. But Dickens most of his life around the city, beloved Romantic was born in Portsmouth, the second child of eight, poet John Keats had strong ties to Hampshire, with and his time in the city was well-remembered later a lot of his more renown works either being written in life when his experiences were moulded into his in the county or passing through. He was said to writing. His father worked upon the docklands, but have written his last Great Ode, ‘To Autumn’, whilst the family wealth fluctuated resulting in debt. When in Winchester, specifically using the location as they recalled to London as his Father’s work took inspiration for his delicate poem. Only a 15 minute them there, the family ended up in a Debtor’s Prison train journey away is Winchester, and there you can in 1824. Nowadays, Dickens’ childhood home is one find Keats’ Walk, a path dedicated to the poet and of the most well-known museums in the city, and his poem ‘To Autumn’ - a lasting remembrance of the books are known around the world. Keats’ stay there. ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, another of LOUISE CHASE his most acclaimed poems was said to have been started in Chichester, 40 minutes down the road JANE AUSTEN When discussing the literary heritage of Hampshire there is one author who is impossible not to mention, Jane Austen. Born in Steventon, Hampshire in 1775, Austen spent the majority of her life living in and around Hampshire, eventually passing away in Winchester aged 41. In her lifetime Jane Austen wrote and published four novels, with two additional novels being published posthumously. Austen is renowned for the use of realism of her narratives, but for me her use of humour and wit makes her stories stand. Despite her novels being focussed around the marriage plot, Austen is a feminist and an intellect in her own right; through the manipulation of the marriage from Southampton where you can visit the house he stayed in during his trip. Some of Keats’ other works include, The Great Ode’s, ‘Ode on a Greccain Urn’, ‘On Insolence’, ‘On Melancholy’, ‘To a Nightingale’ and ‘To Psyche’, as well as other notable lyric poems such as ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ and ‘Bright Star’ all of which explore Keats’ ideas on transiency, life and death as well as longing, love and loneliness. Keats poems are certainly worth checking out, and his ties and admiration to some beautiful locations in Hampshire give you all the more reason to do so. JACK BRANDON