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Rimbaud and Verlaine, Royal College Street

The Camden terrace where Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in 1873, before the shot in Brussels.

Writers' housesFree

Photo by Graham from Adventco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The two poets took a room at 8 Royal College Street in May 1873, aged nineteen and twenty-nine, having fled Paris; they taught French, walked the docks, drank in Camden and quarrelled, and it was from here that Verlaine stormed out in July, after Rimbaud laughed at him for carrying a herring, to the Brussels hotel room where he shot him in the wrist. Rimbaud drafted much of Une Saison en Enfer in London. A plaque marks the house, and the street is otherwise ordinary, which was rather the point.

Where
8 Royal College Street, NW1
Nearest station
Mornington Crescent · 4 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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