Southern Highlands Branch Meeting 2020-8

“Literary England: Susannah’s Top Ten Places”

Susannah Fullerton OAM FRSN
Literary Lecturer and President, Jane Austen Society of Australia

Date: Thursday, 15 October 2020 
Venue: Via email circulation

While pandemic restrictions on group activities prevail, the South Highlands Branch continues to send members information and summaries from our scheduled speakers.

Summary

In her memoir 84 Charing Cross Road, American Helene Hanff goes searching for the ‘England of English Literature’. I know just how she felt. I first went to England in 1980, with a long list of literary places I just had to see – I longed to visit the homes of favourite novelists and poets, walk the paths they had trodden, pay my respects at their graves, and see with my own eyes the landscapes that had filled my imagination since I had learned to read.

England is so rich in literary connections that it was terribly hard choosing only ten places for this talk. I have tried to include variety – of authors, of sites and of geographical area. There’s a library, houses large and small, churches, a graveyard and an ancient charitable institution. I will take you from the gentle countryside of southern England, up to more dramatic northern landscapes.

I hope that this virtual travel will enchant and intrigue you, will give you ideas of places to include in your next visit to England, or bring back wonderful memories. I have not included literary places in London – that has to be a separate talk.

What I hope this talk will make you do is to consider which Top Ten places you would choose, and to consider with a deeper appreciation the incredible riches of the England of English Literature.

The lecture can be access from this link.

Susannah Fullerton  has been the President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia for more than twenty years. She has written several books about Jane Austen and has lectured about her favourite novelist around Australia and overseas. She received an OAM for services to literature and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW. Susannah is also the Patron of the Kipling Society of Australia. She leads literary tours to the UK, Europe, NZ and the USA, and she sends out a popular and free monthly blog, ‘Notes from a Book Addict’ which you can sign up for on her website. Susannah is one of ADFAS’s most popular Australia lecturers and she offers a wide range of talks about famous writers and their works.