The Island's Literary Heritage

Many writers, including Keats and Charles Dickens have lived or worked on the Isle of Wight, attracted by the climate or by the presence of other writers and artists. Writers such as Julian Barnes, author of England, England and Neville Shute have set some of their novels on the Island.

Alfred Lord Tennyson lived at Farringford House - now a hotel - overlooking Freshwater Bay for almost 40 years from 1853. One of Tennyson's best known poems, The Charge of the Light Brigade, was written on the Island whilst, another, Crossing the Bar, was written on a voyage between the mainland and his home. Tennyson was an associate of the writer and photographer Julia Margaret Cameron who lived at Dimbola Lodge in Freshwater Bay. Farringford House became the focus of a literary and artistic circle which included G.F.Watts, Lewis Carroll, and Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Battling against consumption John Keats lived on the Island for two periods between 1817 and 1819. In 1817 he stayed in Castle Road in Carisbrooke and, in 1819, resided at Eglantine Cottage (now Keats Cottage) in Shanklin. During his stay in Shanklin Keats wrote the Sonnet On the Sea and part of Hyperion. Whilst living in Castle Road he began writing the poem Endymion.

		Charles Dickens wrote much of David Copperfield whilst living at what is now the Winterbourne Hotel in Bonchurch in 1849.

Carisbrooke Castle stars in the adventure novel Moonfleet by John Faulkner.

JB Priestley, the writer and broadcaster, lived at Billingham Manor near Kingston and later Brook Hill House in the village of Brook for 25 years. In a radio address in June 1940 Priestly mourned the loss of an Isle of Wight ferry at Dunkirk: "Among those paddle steamers that will never return was one that I knew well, for it was the pride of our ferry service to the Isle of Wight - none other than the good ship Gracie Fields. I tell you, we were proud of the Gracie Fields, for she was the glittering queen of our local line, and instead of taking an hour over her voyage, used to do it, churning like mad, in forty-five minutes."

The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne grew up in East Dene House in Bonchurch. Growing up on the Island Swinburne established a reputation as something of a "demoniac boy" whose behaviour was wild and unpredictable. Swinburne, who returned to the Island in 1863, is buried at St. Boniface's Church in Bonchurch. In 1910, the poet and author, Thomas Hardy wrote A Singer Asleep whilst sitting next to Swinburne's grave.

In John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, survivors of an alien invasion flee to the Island for safety from huge mobile killer plants.