It has now been a year since I made the decision to move to the Isle of Wight and one of the most surprising aspects for me has been the discovery of its rich literary history. As a writer it gives you a cosy feeling, like a stamp of approval, a validation that, yes! someone could live here and be inspired!

My favourite literary connection is unsurprisingly a poetic one. I have even mentioned it in a previous blog from when I came here on holiday. Algernon Charles Swinburne. Like most of the island’s cultural claims to fame, Swinburne was eminent in the Victorian era and his childhood residence and grave is situated about two miles from where I am writing now. I feel lucky that after spending my childhood wandering the same countryside as Coleridge and Wordsworth that I now get to spend some of my adult years using the same trails as another one of my favourite poets. Swinburne’s work had true decadence. His was an imagination untethered from restraint. It was provocative and unconventional in both its structure and taste. The thing that I love most about Swinburne’s poetry is the importance of imagery and metre above all else. His poetry is music.

All are at one now, roses and lovers,
 Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea,
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
 In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter
 Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter
 We shall sleep.

(from A Foresaken Garden)

The poet with the biggest presence on the island is Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson lived the majority of his winters in Freshwater. Today, Farringford House is open to the public, allowing all to appreciate the tranquillity and beauty of its setting. Even into old age he would take his daily walk to the top of the cliff-faced down that projected out from his estate to the bay. Upon his death this became known as Tennyson Trail and Tennyson Down, and at its pinnacle sits Tennyson Monument. During his time on the island he would be the hub of cultured society. Queen Victoria, with her residency at Osborne House, was in great favour of him and made him a Lord. My personal admiration for his work is due to his continuing the tradition of the romantic poets such as Coleridge and Keats and the influence he subsequently had on the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Such is his association with the island that his poetry even escapes it and can be seen approaching the dock from Bargate in Southampton, with lines from Crossing the Bar depicting the same journey he would frequently make as a metaphor for traversing from this life to the next:

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

The photographer Julia Margaret Cameron also lived in Freshwater at the same time as Tennyson. Her house, Dimbola Lodge, is now a museum of her work. The two of them were friends and many of her photographs are of Tennyson and his circle which included Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, William Gladstone, John Herschel, G.F. Watts, Charles Darwin, Henry Longfellow, Edward Lear, William Thackeray, Charles Kingsley and Henry Irving.

In later years, Keats was another that was drawn to the island, frequently holidaying here and living for a couple of years in Newport, where he began his poem Endymion.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams and quiet breathing.

Charles Dickens enjoyed a productive summer vacation in Bonchurch where he wrote a large part of David Copperfield. Karl Marx spent the last two winters of his life convalescing in Ventnor. Ivan Turgenev began his masterpiece Fathers and Sons during his 1860 stay in the same town, which was also favoured by other exiled Russians such as Alexander Herzen.

After World War One, Osborne House became a convalescence home and it was there that AA Milne and Robert Graves met and became friends.

With her connections to nearby Southampton, Jane Austen visited a couple of times but her greatest association with the island is the scene in Mansfield Park where Fanny’s cousins are ridiculing her lack of education.

“But, aunt, she is really so very ignorant! Do you know, we asked her last night, which way she would go to get to Ireland; and she said, she would cross to the Isle of Wight. She thinks of nothing but the Isle of Wight, and she calls it the Island, as if there were no other island in the world.”

(pg. 13, Mansfield Park)

It’s true that it doesn’t take long living here before ‘the Island’ and ‘the Mainland’ becomes part of your vocabulary!

Being a popular seaside destination it is no surprise that many writers have taken vacations here over the years. As well as those mentioned above, holidaymakers have also included Lewis Carroll, Enid Blyton, Thomas Hardy, Winston Churchill and D.H. Lawrence, whose second novel The Trespassers is set in Yarmouth.

Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible. Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In front, Sieglinde’s island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him, bringing him Helena.

(From Chapter 3, as Siegmund is sailing to the island from Portsmouth, presumably to Ryde)

Notable literary connections in the twentieth century are less numerous. J.B. Priestly lived in Brook in the 1950s and the Oscar-winning screen writer Anthony Minghella hailed from Ryde.

I find all of this fascinating, and having this knowledge gives the place I call home an aura of culture that on the surface seems significantly lacking. I’m not too sure why this is. Maybe it’s because the island is tourist-centric and the beaches are the main appeal. I’ve also been surprised by the lack of a thriving writing community, unless it has completely passed me by. It would be fantastic if the two aspects could be improved because I’m sure they would begin to encourage and complement each other. Maybe a future project for myself!

N.B. I’m indebted to Lynne Truss for a lot of this information by means of the Literary Heroes Trail leaflet she edited for the tourist board, as well information produced by Farringford House, Dimbola Lodge, the British Library and Ventnor Town Council.

This month's favourites:
   Pistol Annies, Interstate Gospel
   Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
   The Virgin Spring (1960)