GiSelle Lipsky

I have been living in England for the past five months, consuming copious amounts of tea, walking the knotted cobblestone streets, and immersing myself in London’s steady, gentle heartbeat. With one month left before I return home, I have been reflecting on everywhere I’ve been and how I’ve grown in the process. At the same time, I am consumed with the need to make the most of the dwindling days I have left, returning to my favorite coffee shops and parks as well as exploring even more new neighborhoods. What initially led me here was my fascination, hedging on obsession, with English literature. Having long studied and loved the novels and poetry from across England’s history, I simply had to come here for myself and hopefully find inspiration the same way my favorite authors did. 

I’ve laid out a series of my favorite literary neighborhoods and hidden gems in London, with a few places for food or discovery along the way!

Bloomsbury: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group

The Bloomsbury neighborhood is often thought of as the literary epicenter of London (which is itself a literary center of England and much of Europe) due to the influence of the 20th century Bloomsbury Group. A group of British writers and intellectuals, among them Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Clive and Vanessa Bell, met and gathered around the Bloomsbury neighborhood, united by an understanding of the importance of the arts. It was in this period of the early 1920s that Virginia Woolf wrote some of her most famous novels and essays, E.M. Forster finished his novel, A Passage to India, and later other writers and friends of Woolf joined the fray, including T.S. Eliot and Katherine Mansfield.

I have spent the most time in Bloomsbury over all the other neighborhoods mentioned, due to it also being the site of University College London (UCL), where I am most often found in the library or getting coffee and reading nearby. Before classes even started though, I picked up Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse at a local bookstore, intent on immersing myself in her world completely. Since I had no other academic obligations, I’d spend my days sitting in the parks around Bloomsbury with a coffee and her words, imagining what it would be like to think up my own novel along the quiet streets or to be a part of such a vibrant creative community. Spending time in Bloomsbury has given me a newfound appreciation and adoration for Woolf, her sprawling prose and complex female characters.

 As such, I feel like a particular authority on how best to spend your time in this delightful corner of London, especially if your goal is to immerse yourself in the literary world around you.

How to Spend an Afternoon in Bloomsbury

• A visit to Bloomsbury is not complete without visiting Fortitude Bakehouse, a small bakery tucked behind a pub, serving some of the most stunning pastries and warm beverages. If they have the cinnamon roll in stock, it’s a must!
• About a minute walk away from Fortitude is the delightful Russell Square Gardens, the largest of Bloomsbury’s three parks. With your treats, Russell Square is the perfect place to enjoy a quiet respite from the busy city and university life.
• Although, if you are a true Woolf fanatic, one long block away in Tavistock Square is a bust of Virginia Woolf.
• Watch out for the Blue Plaques in the neighborhood, alerting you to not only the homes and meeting rooms of the Bloomsbury Group, but other cultural stalwarts as well. If you are lucky enough, you’ll stumble upon the house where the Pre-Raphaelite artistic movement began!
• It is also worth a visit to UCL and the multi-storied Waterstones bookstore and adjoining cafe while you’re here!

Hampstead Heath: John Keats & Daphne du Maurier

While I spend the most time in Bloomsbury for school, my favorite neighborhood in all of London is by far Hampstead Heath. More north than central London, Hampstead allows you to escape city life and engross yourself in a wild, magical forest: the Heath. This park is unlike any other in London, free of paved paths and purposefully planted flower beds. It is instead filled with twisting and turning dirt pathways, a series of ponds where people can swim in the summer, and large, imposing beech trees that dot the woods. It also helps that the neighborhood of Hampstead itself is quaint, charming, and leads right to the woods.

Like much of the city, Hampstead is also steeped in literary history, particularly due to the authors that lived there, namely the Romantic poet John Keats and progenitor of the Gothic, Daphne du Maurier. I got to visit Keats’ house, which includes his annotated copy of Paradise Lost and early drafts of his most famous poems. I was in literary heaven! Wandering through the house, you learn that it was where Keats fell in love with and got engaged to Fanny Brawne, as well as where he contracted tuberculosis, which he would die from in 1821. The staff were quick to point me toward a plum tree in the back garden under which Keats supposedly wrote “Ode to a Nightingale”!

Daphne du Maurier’s connection to the Heath is less intense than that of Keats, but she did grow up there. While her most famous novel, Rebecca, is set in a manor house in Cornwall on the English coast, it is not hard to see the connection between the wild mists of the Heath and the similarly rugged landscape she finds so much beauty and terror in.

A Morning in Hampstead Heath

• Along the Hampstead High Street is a plethora of restaurants, bakeries, and even two rival crepe stands positioned about 10 feet apart. My favorite, though, is Ginger & White, a sweet neighborhood brunch spot that also functions as a little takeaway coffee and pastry window. Their cookies are my favorite in the entire city and a mandatory snack while exploring the mysteries of the Heath.
• Once you have your cookie and coffee, I will leave much of the exploration and discovery to you. After all, there are so many winding paths and hidden nooks of the forest to discover!
• I quite like The Hollow Tree, a beech tree with a caverned out trunk. It always reminds me of the Eliot poem, “The Hollow Men.”

Euston: Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley

What is today a busy train and tube station along an equally busy road was once the neighborhood of a young Mary Wollstonecraft who fell in love with William Godwin and died while giving birth to Mary Shelley, the mother of science fiction. The area around Euston, called Somers Town, is a strange amalgamation of differing architectural styles and small neighborhood parks. Around the corner is St. Pancras Church, where Wollstonecraft is buried (if you know, you know). 

I would recommend a visit to the lovely Regents Park, which houses another literary connection: Sylvia Plath lived around the corner! On the other side of Euston are the joint stations of King’s Cross and St. Pancras, which aside from being a key location in the Harry Potter novels, is a lovely place to walk around and explore, especially the newly refurbished Coal Drops Yard.

Southwark: Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

Across the Thames, in the borough of Southwark, you’ll find an imposing, circular theatre with a thatched roof, exposed dark wood beams, and a small open-air stage. There are no seats on the floor of this theatre, just room for a crowd to gather and stand. This is, of course, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. While the one that stands today (where I was lucky enough to see a spellbinding production of Romeo and Juliet this summer) is not the one where The Bard once stood, it is an exact replica. That theatre was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but there still remains a large plaque devoted to it two blocks from the current Globe.

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Seeing a show at the Globe is unlike any other theatregoing experience.

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It is an architectural marvel, as it has been restored to almost exactly how it would have been in the Elizabethan period. There are no modern, artificial lights, and while the floor tickets are no longer one penny, they are still a significantly lower price (if your body can manage to stand for 3+ hours). They only have open-air productions in the summer before they transition into the smaller, entirely candle-lit black box theatre they have onsite during the fall and winter seasons. Seeing a show at the Globe is unlike any other theatregoing experience. Due to the near-replication of the space and its Elizabethan technology, the theatre maintains a wild primitiveness, a buzzing ball of energy that the crowd and cast share, tossing back and forth throughout the evening. For three hours, I was entranced and wholly invested in the story, despite having spent the day walking all around London. It also completely transforms the experience of reading a Shakespeare play into a world and narrative that you too get to inhabit alongside the beloved characters.

An Evening at the Globe

• Time on the other side of the river cannot be spent without going to the now TikTok-viral Borough Market, a glorious oasis of every snack and treat you can imagine. Unlike most recommendations, I’d skip the £9 strawberries and chocolate and instead get a homemade sausage roll or indulge in the fresh-caught oysters. 
• The Globe also has an onsite pub, The Swan, which hosts lovely Sunday roasts, a UK tradition!

Ultimately, living in London has fulfilled all of my literary dreams. I’ve loved my visits to these neighborhoods as much as I’ve loved randomly stumbling across the home of George Orwell in the Notting Hill neighborhood (perhaps more famous for the film). London has so much to offer, English major or not. But even if you harbor a casual interest in English literature, I hope this guide has shown you that London is rife with wonderful neighborhoods, parks, and locations that all have their own literary connections. I will cherish my time abroad here for the rest of my life and hope I can return to London soon.

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