Where In the Dickens Is Gad's Hill? Or, A Comparative Review of Literary Guides to Britain

Whether poet, novelist, or essayist, a writer is influenced by his past — his family, associates, and the places where he has lived. In English literature even if we limit ourselves to the standard texts of English literature classes, we can see that England's geography has had an enormous impact on the country's writers, helping them give “to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name.” Consider Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Wordsworth's “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” and “Composed upon Westminster Bridge,” and Jane Austen's use of Bath in Persuasion.