Culture of Yorkshire - Literature

Literature

There are several instances of the county providing an important role in literature, perhaps the most famous literacy association is that between Whitby in North Yorkshire and Bram Stoker's Dracula. When Stoker wrote the novel, he was living in Whitby at the time and parts of it are set there, it includes several parts of Whitby folklore such as the beaching of the Russian ship Dmitri, which became the basis of Demeter in the book. Today there is a Dracula Museum in the town, celebrating the association. In terms of poetry, one of the most well known from Yorkshire is Andrew Marvell from Winestead-in-Holderness, he was noted for writing metaphysical poetry during the 1600s and his association with several other noted British poets from the era.

“ Then music, the mosaic of the air,
Did of all these a solemn noise prepare;
With which she gain'd the empire of the ear,
Including all between the earth and sphere.
”

—Andrew Marvell, "Music's Empire"

The Brontë sisters -- Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë and Emily Brontë—were all Yorkshirewomen born in Thornton and raised in Haworth, West Yorkshire. Their novels, written in the mid-1800s, caused a sensation when they were first published and were subsequently accepted into the canon of great English literature. Amongst the most noted novels credited to the sisters are Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights.

In the present day, the most prominent Yorkshire presence in English literature is that of the playwright, author, actor, screenwriter and commentator Alan Bennett, born 1934 in Leeds, where much of his work is set.

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Famous quotes containing the word literature:

    “There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.... the essay must be pure—pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter.”
    —Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

    ““If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”
    “And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.””
    —Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    “[The] attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.”
    —Václav Havel (b. 1936)