Local Literary Legends, Part 1.

I'm really lucky living where I do, as more or less around every corner is the birthplace, house, rented accommodation, university, or even tombstone of literary legends.

For a start, this is the house where Sir Walter Scott lived for a time, situated within the Edinburgh University campus in George Square:

 Can just imagine him writing 'Waverley' or 'Ivanhoe' in there!

Right next door to him, lived.......

....Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I've got quite a nice mental image of Walter and Arthur doffing their caps to each other as they leave their homes every morning!

Edinburgh also was the home of Robert Louis Stevenson - his old house is now a Bed and Breakfast, but I will try to get a good photo of it to add to my blog. In addition, contemporary authors base their novels here: Ian Rankin, and Alexander McCall Smith (one of my favourite modern authors), for example.

Not only are there monuments of where literary legends lived, but we have the tomb of a Romantic novelist as well.  Here is the grave of the notorious English Opium Eater, which you can find in St Cuthbert's churchyard, near Lothian Road (the west end of Princes Street). One of my favourite quotes from his Confessions is:

Me standing by De Quincey's grave.

"Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without".

   Can't argue with that!