Currently it’s undergoing a renaissance. Its downtown is lively and thriving, with tons of fun shops and terrific restaurants. On the boardwalk/beach side of town there’s a mix of buildings and a large swath of undeveloped land awaiting redevelopment.

Adjacent to Asbury Park is the more genteel Ocean Grove. Founded as a religious resort, it was a “dry” town with strict rules governing behavior. For instance, it was forbidden to have horse-drawn carriages, and later, cars, on the streets on Sunday. In 1975 this 19th-century planned urban community was designated a State and National Historic District.  It, too, fell on hard times, but in the last several decades it’s experienced a dramatic revival with the restoration of older hotels and the accompanying increased property values.  

One of the themes in The Stark Beauty of Last Things is the relationship of development to preservation. Many times the difference between various communities comes down to whether or not community members have the foresight to plan appropriately and to have a vision for what they value and want to preserve. Often, market forces win out. 

I spent days wandering Dorset and surrounding Dorchester countryside and coastal areas that influenced Hardy.

Above is the magnificent Lulworth Cove, where Hardy’s character, Frank Troy, allegedly disappeared in Far From the Madding Crowd.

A recent exhibition at the Fitzwilliams Museum in Cambridge, of works inspired by Virginia Woolf’s writings, explored the relationship of landscape and feminism and importance of place to Woolf. The catalogue states: “Woolf’s writing acts as a prism through which to explore feminist perspectives on landscape, domesticity, and identity in modern and contemporary art.” It was in Cambridge that Woolf delivered the lectures that went on to become her most famous essay A Room of One’s Own.  

Just as famous as the city is the writer who helped make it famous – Jane Austen – who visited many times and lived there from 1801-1806, when it was a highly fashionable destination for the elite of British society. She set many scenes from two of her most famous novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, in various locations around the town.

When in Bath I visited several of Austen’s homes and walked the same streets she would have walked. It was easy to imagine fashionable women in ankle-length dresses and dainty shoes carrying parasols and strolling through the parks. At one of her residences, 4 Sydney Place, Austen reputedly wrote Northanger Abbey while gazing down on Sydney Gardens. Here, balls, supper parties, and musical breakfasts were held.

The town’s pride is reflected in the Jane Austen Center https://www.janeausten.co.uk/as well as at the Parade Gardens, the gateway to the city, where a commemorative flowerbed for Austen was designed to look like an open book and quill. It’s not often we get to walk in a writer’s shoes and have the surrounds be so close to what they were in her day.

A drawing of a house is what drew author Henry James  (1843-1916), an American who lived in Britain, to the the historic seaport town of Rye, in East Sussex, England. Enchanted by the drawing, he went in search of the house, and fell in love with it. That house was Lamb House, a modest Georgian building on a quiet crooked cobblestoned street.  A few years later he was able to lease it, and subsequently lived there for decades, finding it a refuge from the hustle and bustle and pressures of London.

Medieval Town of Rye

James called Rye “a russet Arcadia” and indeed the town’s reddish bricks give it a russet glow. The town has both produced and attracted many fiction writers. After James other writers lived at Lamb House, including several of my favorites: Rumer Godden (1907-98) and E.F. Benson (1867-1940). This house and town figure prominently in Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels.

Rye is quite beautiful, touted as one of the prettiest medieval towns in England, with narrow, cobblestone streets; charming cottages, many with red roofs or thatch; plus many small intriguing shops: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Rye-East-Sussex/

Lamb House

The Lamb house, one of the town’s historic residences, is now owned by the National Trust https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lamb-house. It is located at the elbow of a street that wanders uphill to a nearby church. It’s only recently been opened to the public, and I came upon it quite by chance when visiting the town. Like many others in this tiny medieval village, the house was small but beautifully proportioned. It had just the air of elegance and grace I associate with James’s work.

I stood in the tiny bedroom looking out on the houses and gardens that James would have gazed upon, touched the very desk at which he wrote what are considered his masterpieces: Wings of a Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl.  What serendipity!

Our exploration of and love for this area have been inspired by Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery novels. There is always serendipity, and this year we discovered “barn quilts”—quilt patterns painted on barns—along a lovely road near the border on the Vermont side. Seeing them was like sharing a special secret, a palpable symbol of community. (We later discovered that over 7,000 painted barn quilts are part of organized trails, while others are simply scattered throughout the countryside waiting to be discovered (full website). Here are a few:

We stumbled upon another form of culture sharing. In several towns in Canada we spotted tiny “free libraries,” each unique in design and placement. These are small receptacles—like large bird houses—in which people place books to be shared—for free. How delighted I was to come home and learn that the Women’s National Book Association, on whose board I serve, had awarded a prize to the organization Little Free Library that spawned this library movement.