Reviews: Kent’s Literary Heritage
Kent’s Literary Heritage. By Margaret Woodhams, (Amberley Publishing, 2023), 96 pp. £15.00. IBSN 978 1 3981106 1 8.
Kent’s Literary Heritage joins a long tradition of books exploring the county’s connections with famous authors, with early examples including Thomas Frost’s In Kent with Charles Dickens (1880) and Charles Harper’s The Ingoldsby Country (1904). In the first decades of the twentieth century, tourist guides by Ward, Lock & Co. included handy lists of literary associations for the respective areas. Recent publications such as Susan McGowan’s 2021 Literary Kent testify to the continuing fascination of writers’ response to the county’s varied land, town and seascapes.
Woodhams’s own exploration of Kent’s literary connections draws readers in with a lavish supply of photographs, illustrating places associated with authors and legendary figures from Hengist and Horsa to Ian Fleming. It does also include at least a sprinkling of less well-known names, and refreshingly it covers drama, poetry and nonfiction as well as the more familiar novel form.
The book is structured chronologically rather than by location, working from the expansively titled ‘In the beginning’ to ‘The present’. This approach allows readers to skip to their favourite literary period, but also encourages them to range widely across the county in the quest for birthplaces, schools and houses. There are some cross-period connections, most obviously between old boys of the King’s School in Canterbury (Christopher Marlowe, Somerset Maugham), but also in the allusions to Virginia Woolf’s admiration of Aphra Behn and Elizabeth Carter.
As might be expected, Jane Austen and Dickens are each given a considerable amount of space. No complaints from this nineteenth century devotee, but writing on such iconic figures incurs some risk, not least that of replicating earlier authors’ mistakes. The naming of Bleak House has been causing editorial headaches for 150 years, but in fact it was only formally changed from ‘Fort House’ in the 1880s. A more obvious gap is the connection to Wilkie Collins, who is mentioned only [pg356]briefly in relation to visits to Dickens at Gad’s Hill, although he regularly spent holidays in Broadstairs and Ramsgate (the latter providing a setting for The Law and the Lady in 1875). It is not clear how much Woodhams has engaged with local history societies and projects, which is a missed opportunity. However the bibliography includes the excellent https://www.victorianweb.org/ and https:// kentliterature.com/ as well as more generic and popular sources.
Poetry is well represented, and the twentieth century chapter ranges beyond the usual suspects such as T. S. Eliot, to include obscure figures such as the successive Laureates Alfred Austin and Robert Bridges. Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Thomas are also included, drawing attention to the Kent connections of these WW1 poets. The thematic chapter on ‘Children’s Writers’ feels slightly awkward, and made me wonder if it had been taken out of the twentieth century to help with the wordcount.
The twenty first century was always going to be a challenge, given the space available – and who wants the responsibility of deciding which writers make the cut? Woodhams wisely opts for a brief sketch of Michael Morpurgo and a handful of references to other authors (I had no idea Fifty Shades author E. L. James was a University of Kent alumna).
Kent’s Literary Heritage does not claim to provide new insights into the county’s literary past. What it offers is a readable and engaging overview, with enticing photographs that reminded this reader to get out of the house and go and look at it – even on a rainy day in January.
CAROLYN W. DE LA L. OULTON