Placing Literature is a new interactive website that lets users map the whereabouts of scenes from fiction. Amanda Kooser explains the appeal:
One of the first things I did when I visited London a few years ago was to go on a Sherlock Holmes walking tour. I’m not the only avid reader compelled to seek out the real-life settings found in books. This desire is what has brought about Placing Literature, an interactive site dedicated to plotting scenes from books onto real-world maps. It’s like a heady mixture of a database, Google Maps, and the efforts of a bunch of literature geeks. Placing Literature started with a conversation between co-founders Andrew Bardin Williams (an author) and his sister-in-law Kathleen Colin Williams (a geographer). “I use a lot of real-world locations in my novels. We decided there was this great intersection between geography and literature that hadn’t been explored before,” says Andrew Bardin Williams. …
Crowdsourcing is key to the project. “The goal is to gather as much data as we possibly can, get people to share it, and get people to start exploring their neighborhoods and their communities,” says Williams. “We’re ready to turn it over to the community now and see what happens with it.”
Previous Dish on literary tourism here.
(Image: Screenshot of The Catcher in the Rye in Central Park on Placing Literature)
(Hat tip: Per Square Mile)
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