Writers In Bakewell
Famous Writers with a Derbyshire Connection
Derbyshire and the Peak District have not produced a Charles Dickens or a William Shakespeare but the area attracted a wide range of literary visitors and admirers over the years.
As far back as 1586 Elizabethan historian William Camden, was writing about the Wonders of the Peak, naming nine of them in his Britannia. Thomas Hobbes published his De Mirabilibus Pecci: Concerning the Wonders of the Peak in Darby-shire in 1636, followed by Charles Cotton's The Wonders of the Peak in 1681, probably the first successful guide
Other notable literary giants from Derbyshire include Dr Erasmus Darwin (1731 - 1802) who penned several books on botany. He was also grandfather to naturalist Charles Darwin.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) came to Bakewell in 1811 and stayed at the Rutland Arms Hotel as a part of her travels around Derbyshire. She visited Chatsworth and other tourist destinations during her stay and took inspiration from her visit. Derbyshire’s dales and Chatsworth House are clearly the inspiration for settings in her novel Pride and Prejudice (1853) with Lambton being modelled on Bakewell and Mr Darcy’s residence Pemberley on Chatsworth House..
Alison Uttley (1884-1976) was born in Cromford, educated at Lea School, Holloway and Lady Manners School, Bakewell. Her book The Country Child (1931) was a work of fiction inspired by her childhood in Cromford. Alison Uttley was also inspired by Wingfield Manor in her story of the Babington family and Mary Stuart’s elaborate, but unsuccessful plan, A Traveller in Time (1939). Her home in Beaconsfield was called Thackers after the house in A Traveller in Time. The Thackers in the novel was inspired by a home in Dethick now owned by Simon Groom (ex Blue Peter presenter).
Vera Brittain, writer, pacifist and feminist, (1893-1970) spent a part of her childhood in Buxton from the age of 11. In the first part of her three part autobiography, Testament of Youth (1933) her time in Buxton is discussed
New Mills was the setting for The Railway Children (1906) by Edith Nesbitt (1858 - 1924)
Richmal Crompton (1890-1969) wrote the Just William series. Inspiration taken perhaps from her time spent at St Elphin's School in Darley Dale, near Matlock
Ellen Fitzgerald (pseudonym of Florence Stevenson) wrote The Damsels of Derbyshire (1992), an historical romance novel with hero Lionel, Marquis of Ashton and heroine Lady Tabitha Spencer
Castleton and Peveril Castle are the setting for Sir Walter Scott’s (1771-1832) Peveril of the Peak (1823) and Ann Ward Radcliffe's (1764 - 1823) gothic romance The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Roy Hattersley (born 1932), Derbyshire resident for many years wrote Buster's Diaries, charting the life of his dog Buster (recently deceased in October 2009)
Bringing us up to date to the present day, Derbyshire born writer Hilary Mantel was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2009 for her novel Wolf Hall. Hilary was born in Glossop in 1952.
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