Literary Devon

The Exeter Book

Exeter Cathedral is home to the Exeter Book, a 10th-century anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry and riddles. The book was donated to the Cathedral library in 1072, and is the largest known collection of Old English literature still in existence, predating Beowulf. In 2016, UNESCO recognised the book as one of the ‘world’s principal cultural artefacts’.

Powderham Castle

The Courtenay family were consumers and collectors of books as far back as the 1400s, at a time when even the Royal Family had not yet established a library. The family commissioned the Courtenay Cartulary, which contains one of the earliest histories of Devon and traces the building of castles, abbeys, and Exeter Cathedral. In 1740, local craftsmen—including John Channon, a renowned furniture maker from Ottery St. Mary—fabricated the upstairs library at Powderham Castle showing early expression of private display of books in the home.

Independent Library and First Woman Librarian

The Devon and Exeter Institution (DEI) is a subscription library founded in 1813 for ‘the general diffusion of science, literature and the arts’. Located at 7 Cathedral Close, in what was formerly the city townhouse of the Courtenay family of Powderham Castle, the DEI houses more than 45,000 books and periodicals, a great many relating to the history of Devon.

The Devon & Exeter Institution admitted women, unusual for independent libraries at the time. In 1849, Eliza Squance beat 20 male applicants to succeed her father John Squance as librarian for the Institution. She ranks as the earliest known professional woman librarian in England, though her appointment was made conditional on her remaining unmarried.

Penguin Books

Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, was inspired to create the paperback imprint while waiting at St David’s train station. As the Managing Director of Bodley Head, publisher of Agatha Christie’s novels, Lane was returning from a meeting with the mystery author in Devon in 1934 when he found himself at Exeter St David’s with nothing to read. He conceived of paperback editions of literature of proven quality which would be cheap enough to be sold from a vending machine – and Penguin Books was founded in 1935 as part of Bodley Head.

University of Exeter

The University of Exeter’s Special Collections department hosts the archives of famous writers such as William Golding, Ted Hughes, Charles Causley, Agatha Christie, Daphne du Maurier, and Sir John Betjeman. The Creative Writing department has strong links with a number of African cities, crucial to UNESCO’s Sustainable Development goals, and the university offers a master’s degree in Publishing.

JK Rowling

JK Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, studied French and Classics at the University of Exeter, graduating in 1986.

Mary Patricia Willcocks

Mary Willcocks, was a novelist and suffrage activist who spent most of her life in Exeter. She was born on a farm close to Dartmoor, which provided the background for many of her novels, featuring strong women characters, often set in rural Devon She moved to Exeter in 1907 when her early novels proved successful enough for her to risk abandoning teaching for life as a freelance writer and speaker. In 1943 she was awarded a Civil List pension for services to literature.

During her first ten years in Exeter she campaigned for Votes for Women, organising campaigns across Devon and Cornwall for the National Union of Suffrage Societies, including the 1913 Votes for Women march from Land’s End to Hyde Park. She retained an interest in political activism even after the vote was won, campaigning on issues such as employment opportunities for women.

Charles Dickens

In 1835, Charles Dickens covered the Exeter City Council elections for the newspaper he worked at. During this time, he became friends with Thomas Latimer, editor of the Western Times, based at 143 Fore Street, which is where Dickens stayed whenever he came to Exeter. Dickens later rented a cottage for his parents in Alphington and took libation at the Turk’s Head Inn on the High Street.

Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker

Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) – a writer, scholar, priest, and collector of folk tales and music – was born in St Sidwell’s, Exeter. It’s said that his Book of Were-Wolves (1865) and his vampire story Margery of Quether (1892) inspired Bram Stoker’s thinking when writing Dracula. Stoker repaid the inspiration by having the character of Jonathan Harker leave for Transylvania from an office on Cathedral Close. Bram Stoker’s brother, George Stoker, died in 1920 in Reed Hall at the University of Exeter (which was then a hospital) and is buried in Exeter Higher Cemetery.

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, a Dorset native, set most of his novels in the South West. Four of his books – The Trumpet Major, Jude the Obscure, A Pair of Blue Eyes and The Woodlanders – include scenes in Exonbury, which was Hardy’s name for Exeter.

Agatha Christie

Famous crime writer Dame Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in Devon. Known throughout the world as the ‘Queen of Crime’, Torquay’s most famous resident has sold more than two billion copies and her books have been translated into over 100 languages. She remains the unrivalled, most successful female playwright of our time. Christie lived in Devon for much of her life and purchased a holiday home, Greenway House, near Brixham, in 1938. As a result of her love and extensive knowledge of the area, many of her books were either set locally, such as And Then There Were None, or were inspired by the surrounding Devon scenery.

Michael Morpurgo

Dartmoor resident Sir Michael Morpurgo OBE is an author, poet, playwright, and librettist, who is known best for his children’s novels, including War Horse (1982). His work is noted for its ‘magical storytelling’ and for vivid settings such as Devon and the Cornish coast. Morpurgo became the third Children’s Laureate, from 2003 to 2005. He was an ambassador of our Exeter City of Literature UNESCO bid.

Philip Reeve

Award-winning illustrator and writer Philip Reeve also lives on Dartmoor. In 2013, he created The Exeter Riddles, an exclusive short story for the Animated Exeter Festival that inspired an interactive street game in which history ‘leaked’ into the contemporary world. The Exeter Riddles was inspired by the many riddles in The Exeter Book.

Luke Kennard

Luke Kennard, poet, novelist and critic, received his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD at the University of Exeter. While studying, he wrote monologues for drama students to perform at a fortnightly sketch revue in a pub basement. The Solex Brothers (winner of the 2005 Eric Gregory Award) and the Harbour Beyond the Movie (shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2007) were both published during his time in Exeter.

Dame Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel was the two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize for her bestselling novels Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. Wolf Hall has been translated into 36 languages, Bring Up the Bodies into 31, and sales for both books have reached over 5 million copies worldwide. The author of fourteen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, and the memoir Giving Up the Ghost, in 2014 she was appointed DBE and was Patron of the Budleigh Literary Festival.

Jean Rhys

Born in Dominica as Ella Gwendoline Williams, Jean Rhys (1890-1979) was one of the most acclaimed women writers of the modernist period. She moved to Paris in 1919, and her novels and short stories of the interwar period explore the experiences of marginalised, underprivileged women. Rhys rose to fame in 1966 when she published Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). By that time, she was living in Cheriton Fitzpaine near Exeter where friends had bought a house for her in 1960. It was also here in Devon that she wrote many of the stories included in her final collection Sleep It Off Lady (1976).

Exeter Library

Exeter Library received more than half a million visits in 2019, making it one of the busiest buildings in the city and the 18th most visited public library in Great Britain. In the same year, the Library loaned more than a quarter of a million items, the fifth most issues in any public library in Great Britain over that period.