The anticipated follow-up to the book lovers’ favorite, Literary Wonderlands, LITERARY LANDSCAPES delves deep into the geography, location, and terrain of our best-loved literary works and looks at how setting and environmental attributes influence storytelling, character, and our emotional response as readers. Fully illustrated with hundreds of full-color images throughout.

Some stories couldn’t happen just anywhere. As is the case with all great literature, the setting, scenery, and landscape are as central to the tale as any character, and just as easily recognized. LITERARY LANDSCAPES brings together more than 50 literary worlds and examines how their description is intrinsic to the stories that unfold within their borders.

Follow Leopold Bloom’s footsteps around Dublin. Hear the music of the Mississippi River steamboats that set the score for Huckleberry Finn. Experience the rugged bleakness of New Foundland in Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News or the soft Neapolitan breezes in My Brilliant Friend.
The landscapes of enduring fictional characters and literary legends are vividly brought to life, evoking all the sights and sounds of the original works. LITERARY LANDSCAPES will transport you to the fictions greatest lands and allow you to connect to the story and the author’s intent in a whole new way.

MY THOUGHTS:

I received this book in exchange for my honest review.

WOW! I thought the first book, Literary Wonderlands, was extraordinary, but this book… off the charts!

What a great resource book for any reader and/or writer.  Showing the necessary relationship between setting and character in famous literary pieces throughout time is done with stunning artwork and great wisdom.

“From vistas of sublime rugged countryside to the grime of moody city streets, the novels of the nineteenth century began the intense engagement with natural surroundings, rooting psychology in setting.  In these dramas of sociability, place figures not just as mere backdrop, but a defined character in the cast of interactions.”

Such a explicit example of thought and talent shown above, a piece taken from Literary Landscapes that basically says it all about the connection and importance of great settings to complete the purpose of plot and character. Without setting, you have an unfulfilled emptiness of expression that leaves the story flat.

This book is divided up into the following main sections:

Romantic Prospects

Mapping Modernism

Post-War Panoramas

Contemporary Geographies

The above is broken down into many sub-sections with terrific examples and artwork to bring the written word to life, full of meaning and definition.  John Sutherland’s Introduction that follows is insightful and full of intellectual brilliance.

Such amazing books, you must own both.

I gave this book: