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Authors - Soho, Marylebone, Bloomsbury Walking Tour
London

Byron, Shelley, and Dickens all lived within a short walk of each other here. Find out what Soho and Bloomsbury gave them that nowhere else could.

7 stops · 3.7 km

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Every Stop Has a Story

William Blake

Blake was born on this spot, and as a boy he claimed to have seen a tree full of angels, a story that nearly earned him a thrashing from his father.

Percy Shelley

Shelley came here in 1811, fresh from being expelled from Oxford, and fell so in love with the wallpaper that he declared, "We must stay here; stay for ever!"

Lord Byron

London's very first blue plaque marked Byron's birthplace here, but the house was demolished in 1889 and the plaque lost, and it now appears the plaque may not even have marked the right building.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle set up as an eye doctor here in 1891, but not one patient ever came, so he spent his empty hours writing Sherlock Holmes stories instead.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Burnett lived in this grand 1770s house in the 1890s, and when its blue plaque went up in 1979 it was fixed to the wrong house and had to be moved next door the following day.

George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf

This is one of very few London addresses with a double blue plaque, home first to George Bernard Shaw and later to Virginia Woolf, who began writing The Voyage Out while living here.

Charles Dickens

Dickens' 17-year-old sister-in-law Mary Hogarth died while living in this house with the family, a loss believed to have inspired both Rose Maylie and Little Nell.

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