Why the places we love in books can never quite be found in real life

From Hardy’s Wessex to Brontë country, literary tourists may be chasing places that never quite existed as they imagine them.

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Fardels Bear@mastodon.social 2026-09-20 19:19

@gutenberg_org

I'm a big fan of the Mapp & Lucia novels, by E. F. Benson. Brilliant social comedy set in the fictional village of Riseholme, and later, Tilling in E. Sussex. While Riseholme is a bit generic, Tilling is exactly mapped onto Rye, where Benson lived for many years in Lamb House. You can see how closely in the map below, a memento of the 'Rye Gathering' I went on pilgrimage to in the early Noughties.

I also visited Dundee, looking for William McGonagall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapp_and_Lucia

A folded card showing a line drawing of Lamb House, flanked by two golfers in plus fours hailing each other across the street. The text reads TILLING MAP: The probable locations of the inhabitants of E. F. Benson's Mapp & Lucia novels. These are set in 'Tilling', which is really Rye. (Please respect the fact that most are now private houses.)

On the right is line map of the principal streets in Rye, with the houses of the characters marked in black. On the left is a detailed index, noting the Tilling names in the novels and their real names in Rye, linked together by their common house numbers.

Mapp and Lucia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Project Gutenberg@mastodon.social 2026-09-20 19:47

@riggbeck Lovely, thanks for sharing!