ABSTRACT
The close and reciprocal relation between walking and literature has a long history. Not only has walking inspired poetry, fiction and travel writing over the centuries, literary texts have also always motivated people to walk in the footsteps of authors, tracing literary settings as well as biographical locations. The term literary walk itself is vague and can mean many things: a walk through land- or cityscapes associated with authors, concrete spots where authors (mostly poets) wrote particular texts, land-art trails with poems carved in stone or wood, landscapes that inspired authors, and the projection of fictional literary locations onto real places. This article seeks to explore the tradition of British literary walks in print and other media which, articulating a sense of self as well as of place, point to the local embeddedness of literature. It will discuss them as marketable products of the heritage and tourist industries and will lay a particular focus on the use and touristic appeal of digital technologies.
