Cornwall's Literary Heritage

The fascinating history of Cornwall’s remarkable literary heritage as well as being a guide to the locations where that heritage can still be found.

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Cornwall has a special literary heritage. Its writers and poets seem to come from its rich, deep and ancient rock formations, unique geology and proximity to the sea. Cornwall’s writers have been shapted by landscape, from its bardic tradition and ancient language of Kernewek to the present day. In the north, the literary giant of Thomas Hardy lived and worked in St. Juliot where he met and courted his first wife. This part of the county is also the setting for Winston Graham’s extraordinarily popular ‘Poldark’ series of novels. Fowey in the south has been home to Daphne du Maurier, ‘Q’ (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch), Kenneth Graham and Mabel Lucie Attwell. John le Carre lived in Cornwall and his books often involve Cornish interludes. Visiting writers also drew inspiration from Cornwall, including Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf and Conan Doyle. Cornwall’s forgotten authors also have a place, from Derek Tangye’s popular 1970s accounts of escaping the rat race and their lost classics. Crosbie Garstin’s lost classic ‘Owtho Penhale’ trilogy and the Hocking family.

Cornwall’s rich poetic tradition is represented by John Betjeman, Charles Causley and the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker. More recently ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ has a Cornish setting, and today Cornwall has a busy and popular literary world with writers such Liz Fenwick, Fern Britton, Victoria Holt, W. J. Burley and Patrick Gale.

This book explores the fascinating history of Cornwall’s remarkable literary heritage as well as being a guide to the locations where that heritage can still be found.