Fifteen Eighty Four

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE LITERATURE OF LONDON surveys treatments of the capital city over five centuries – from canonical masterpieces to the popular and ephemeral – and explores London’s evolving place in the literary imagination. On the streets on London, you can see this history for yourself on the blue plaques that dot the buildings. These plaques mark the spots where famous writers lived – sometimes, like in the case of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, they lived in the same apartment, with George Eliot just down the block!

Check out the map to explore some of the most famous literary homes in London, and see where your favorite writers called home.

View Literary London in a full screen map

Daniel Defoe (1663-1731): 95 Stoke Newington Church Street, Stock Newington

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): 110 Chiswick Lane South, Chiswick

Henry Fielding (1707-1754): Milbourne House, Barnes Green

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): 17 Gough Square, Holborn

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): 71 Berners Street, Soho

John Keats (1795-1821): Wentworth Place, Hampstead

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861): 50 Wimpole Street, Marylebone

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892): 9 Upper Belgrave Street, Belgravia

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863): 16 Young Street, Kensington

Charles Dickens (1812-1870): 48 Doughty Street, Holborn

George Eliot (1819-1880): 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909): 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): The Adelphi Terrace, Charing Cross

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): 34 Tite Street, Chelsea

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924): 17 Gillingham Street, Victoria

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936): 43 Villiers Street, Charing Cross

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965): 6 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, 1911-1919

E. M. Forster (1879-1970): Arlington park Mansions, Sutton Lane, Turnham Green

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): 29 Fitzroy Square, Bloomsbury

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930): 1 Byron Villas, Vale of Health, Hampstead

Ezra Pound (1885-1972): 10 Kensington Church Walk, Holland Park

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965): 3 Kensington Court Gardens, Kensington

George Orwell (1903-1950): 50 Lawford Road, Kentish Town

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966): 145 North End Road, Golders Green