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Where the books were written, set, sold, printed and buried: from the Globe to the graves, the bookshops to the presses.
This season's book talks, festivals and exhibitions are in What's On: Books & writers
Carlyle's lending library of 1841, a million books on open shelves that members may take home.
Libraries & archives
Thomas Carlyle founded it because the British Museum would not lend and its reading room gave him headaches; Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, Conan Doyle, Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Agatha Christie and Kipling were members, and it is still where a large part of literary London writes. The stacks are iron grilles you can see down through, seventeen miles of them, shelved by a scheme of the library's own invention, and nothing is thrown away. It is a members' library, so the rooms are seen on the tours it runs and at its evening events.
Public tours, booked
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.