LONDON STATUES - LITERATURE
LONDON STATUES - LITERATURE
The legendary (and possibly composite) ancient Greek poet, Homer is traditionally credited with The Iliad and The Odyssey, foundational works of Western literature that shaped epic storytelling, heroism, and myth for millennia. His very existence is debated; statues usually depict him blind, reflecting ancient tradition rather than fact.
Parnassus Frieze, Albert Memorial
Dante was exiled from Florence for life, a fate that led to the creation of The Divine Comedy, an epic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven that fused theology, politics, and biting satire. He wrote in Italian rather than Latin, helping to standardise the Italian language.
Parnassus Frieze, Albert Memorial
Chaucer is often called the father of English literature. His Canterbury Tales brought
everyday English speech and earthy humour into poetry, elevating the vernacular
to literary status. He was also a civil servant and diplomat.
Guildhall Art Gallery Parnassus Frieze, Albert Memorial
The Puritan
preacher's The Pilgrim’s Progress became one of the most widely read
books in history, presenting Christian life as an allegorical journey. Much of the book was written while Bunyan was serving twelve years in prison for
preaching without a licence.
Baptist Church House, Southampton Row; John Bunyan holding a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress.
St Paul's Churchyard
John Donne was born near to St Paul's in Bread Street. He posed for his own funeral monument while still alive.
Spenser was author of The Faerie Queene, a vast allegorical poem celebrating virtue, chivalry, and Queen Elizabeth I. It was meant to be twelve books - he only finished six. He created the Spenserian stanza and was buried near Chaucer, with poets throwing verses into his grave.
Islington Central Library
FRANCIS BACON (1561–1626)
Bacon was a philosopher, statesman, and essayist who helped shape the scientific method and
modern prose style. It is rumoured (implausibly) that Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays. He died from pneumonia after attempting to preserve a dead chicken by stuffing it with snow.
Islington Central Library City of London School, Blackfriars
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Burlington House, Burlington Gardens
South Square, Gray's Inn
A keen gardener, Francis Bacon personally tended this attractive Gray's Inn garden.
BEN JONSON (c.1572–1637)
Poet, playwright, critic, bricklayer (briefly), and professional curmudgeon, Ben Jonson was Shakespeare’s great contemporary - and, at times, his rival. He was also the first writer to publish his plays as a collected “Works,” a daring move that implied drama deserved the same respect as poetry or history. He killed a fellow actor in a duel, claimed “benefit of clergy,” and escaped execution by reciting a psalm from memory. Jonson once walked from London to Edinburgh and back, being feasted and toasted the entire way.
Westminster Abbey
In his final years, Ben Jonson lived on Westminster Abbey in poverty. He asked to be buried there but didn't think himself worthy of a six foot grave, requesting a plot 18 inches square. So he was buried upright. His name above his grave was engraved in a different form to the one he preferred to be known by. He preferred Jonson, partly to distinguish himself from the much more common Johnson surname.
Poet and
polemicist Milton is remebered for Paradise Lost, an epic retelling of the Fall
of Man written while he was blind. He dictated his poetry to assistants and defended freedom of speech
in Areopagitica.
City of London School, Blackfriars Burlington House, Burlington Gardens
Parnassus Frieze, Albert Memorial Hammersmith Library
Wimbledon Library
Seething Lane Garden Guildhall Art Gallery
Samuel Pepys lived in Seething Lane and it was in this garden that he buried state papers and a valuable parmesan cheese when the Great Fire threatened.Pope was a master of satirical verse whose heroic couplets dominated 18th-century poetry, notably The Rape of the Lock. Physically frail and self-taught, Pope designed his own grotto at Twickenham.
Twickenham Library
Lexicographer,
essayist, and conversational titan, Johnson is best remembered for compiling the first
great English dictionary. Published in 1775, it took nine years to complete. Johnson was immortalised by his biographer James Boswell as
Britain’s most quotable intellectual.
St Clement Danes, Strand
The book Samuel Johnson is holding is not the original which was stolen in 1995.
Thomas Gray is best known for Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, a meditation on mortality and obscurity and one of the most quoted poems in English.
39-41 Cornhill
Gray was born in a house that stood on this site. The tablet carries the opening line of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard - 'The curfew tolls the knell of parting day'. The songs and poems of Robert Burns celebrate love, politics, and rural life. The 'Bard of Scotland' wrote the poem Auld Lang Syne in 1788. Eleven years later, it was set to the traditional auld tune we are all familiar with.
Victoria Embankment Gardens, Main Garden
The Robert Burns statue stands on a pedestal of pink Peterhead granite with a base of Aberdeen granite. On the scroll at his feet are the words, 'O sweet to stray and pensive ponder a heart-felt song'. It is claimed that, apart from Queen Victoria and Christopher Columbus, Robert Burns has more statues worldwide than any other non-religious figure.
Goethe is Germany’s greatest writer, whose works include Faust, poetry, novels, and scientific studies. He inspired Napoleon and dabbled seriously in colour theory, whatever that might be.
Parnassus Frieze, Albert Memorial Burlington House, Burlington Gardens
Visionary poet, artist, engraver, and all-round outsider, William Blake lived almost his entire life in London yet saw a city populated by angels, demons, and cosmic forces. He detested factories, '...dark satanic mills', and industrial England with a passion. Blake wrote Jerusalem in 1803 as a poem called 'And did those feet in ancient time'. The music was composed by Hubert Parry in 1916. The words 'England's green and pleasant land' always drift through my head in those moments just before landing at Heathrow. I resist singing it out loud.
Westminster Abbey
For a long time there was a reluctance by the Abbey to honour our great literary figures, thought to have questionable morality. Jacob Epstein's bust of William Blake did not appear until 1957, on the bicentenary of Blake's death.Lamb was an essayist and critic best known for Essays of Elia, a series of witty, intimate reflections on London life, literature, and memory. He protected and cared for his sister Mary after she tragically killed their mother with a carving knife during a mental breakdown - they collaborated on Tales from Shakespeare. Lamb loved London and wrote, 'The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street. I am naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London it vanishes like other ills'.
Giltspur Street
Charles Lamb's pen name was Elia. This bust in Giltspur Street once stood within Christ's hospital where he was a schoolboy.
Shelley was a radical Romantic poet whose idealism and lyrical intensity produced works such as Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned aged 29; his heart was reportedly salvaged from his funeral pyre on the beach. His second wife - Mary Shelley - wrote Frankenstein.
Tate Britain
Keats was one of the great Romantic poets, celebrated for sensuous language and emotional depth despite dying young. He trained as a surgeon at Guy's Hospital before deciding to become a poet. He asked for his tombstone to say 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.'
John Keats statue sits in an alcove from the old London Bridge, set up at Guy's in 1861. The sculpture, unveiled in 2007 by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, was the first of Keats anywhere in the world.
Tennyson was Poet Laureate for over 40 years. His works include In Memoriam and The Charge of the Light Brigade. Hugely popular in his lifetime, he initially refused burial in Westminster Abbey - but was eventually persuaded otherwise.
Guildhall Art Gallery Twickenham Library
Westminster Abbey
Dickens was the great Victorian novelist whose vivid characters and social criticism shaped the modern novel. He enjoyed fame in his own lifetime because his works were serialised in popular monthly magazines rather than as books - they were the soap operas of their day. He wanted a quiet funeral but it was attended by 200,000 people and he ended up in Poets' Corner.
Ferguson House, Marylebone High Street Red Lion, Parliament Street
Charles Dickens lived in a house in Marylebone High Street for many years, writing several novels there. This relief has him joined by characters from his novels.
Dickens is thought to have patronised the Red Lion, but then it seems almost every pub in London has the same claim.
Given his literary standing and association with London it does seem strange that there isn't a large statue of Dickens somewhere in the capital. But he did say he wanted no such representations. The Dickens and Little Nell statue in Philadelphia is one of just three known statues of Dickens. The other two are in Portsmouth and Sydney.
Poe invented the modern detective story. The American was a master of Gothic fiction, poetry and psychological horror. He died under mysterious circumstances after being found in great distress roaming the streets of Baltimore.
Stoke Newington Church Street where Poe was a pupil at the former Manor House School.
Wilde was an Irish playwright and wit, known for clever humour and sharp insights. His plays like The Importance of Being Earnest showcase his mastery of satire. Wilde's writing explored identity, morality, and the human condition with irony and wit.
Adelaide Street - the quote "We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars" is from Lady Windermere’s Fan. This sculpture, by Maggi Hamling, was unveiled in 1998 by some of Wilde's descendants and Stephen Fry, who played the lead in the 1997 movie Wilde.
Dovehouse Green, Chelsea
The Head of Oscar Wilde by Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) was unveiled on 16 October 2024 to coincide with centenary of the artist's birth and the 170th birthday of Wilde, who lived in Chelsea for much of his creative life.
Note there are also interesting statues in Dublin of Oscar Wilde and his second wife Constance Lloyd - click here.
Inevitably, here are some of Oscar's quotes ....
"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike."
"I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."
"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
"The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously - and have somebody find out."
"This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do." Oscar's last words
In 1913, the Indian poet, novelist, and philosopher became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
Gordon Square
The author of The Jungle Book and Kim, Bombay-born Kipling blended imperial themes with vivid storytelling. In 1907 he became the first English-language Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was the inspiration for the best-selling postcard of all time, created by Donald McGill.
National Portrait Gallery
Press baron Northcliffe (Alfred Harmsworth) revolutionised mass journalism through the Daily Mail, changing how literature, news, and advertising reached the public. He later owned the Daily Mirror and The Times.
St Dunstan's, Fleet St
The playwright and critic's sharp wit tackled politics, class, and morality. Shaw hated Shakespeare’s romanticism. He became the first person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize (Literature, 1925) and an Oscar (Adapted Screenplay, 1938). His screenplay for Pygmalion was spoken of as having "lifted movie-making from illiteracy to literacy".
National Portrait Gallery
This bronze bust was sculpted in 1934 by Jacob Epstein.
Wells was a science fiction pioneer whose novels explored technology, class, and the future, including The Time Machine, a term he coined. He also predicted tanks, atomic bombs, and more in his sci-fi. We're still waiting for the time travel.
Woking The Herbert Wells
Herbert George Wells lived in Woking between 1895 and 1898 when he wrote The Invisible Man and most of The War of the Worlds - in which the Martian aliens land on Horsell Common in Woking. The metal sculpture in the Wetherspoons named after him is a bit odd. But the one in the town centre is rather more conventional.
Woking
..... and there's also a 7.6 metre Martian Tripod created by Michael Condron. It was unveiled in 1998 by Carol Vorderman. One of the most successful writers of the 20th century, Somerset Maugham was famed for his clear prose and sharp observations of human weakness. He trained as a doctor and openly explored his own unhappy experiences for fiction.
Tate Britain
This is another bust (1951) by Jacob Epstein.
Journalist and prolific writer of thrillers and crime fiction, Wallace was immensely popular in his day. He wrote or dictated at extraordinary speed and is said to have written one novel in just three days. He died in Hollywood where he was working on the screenplay for King Kong.
The Edgar Wallace, Essex Street, WC2
Edgar Wallace used to drink in this pub - just off Fleet Street - when it was called The Essex Head. The crime writer was a war correspondent for Reuters and the Daily Mail and also the BBC’s first sports reporter. The pub was renamed in 1975 to commemorate the centenary of Edgar Wallace's birth. His bust is upstairs, together with a library of many of the 175 books he wrote.
Woolf was a modernist novelist whose experimental narratives reshaped fiction, notably Mrs Dalloway. As a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group she deeply influenced feminist literary criticism. She tragically drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex.
Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury
Richmond
The statue of a seated Virginia Woolf overlooks the Thames at Richmond Riverside, a spot where she lived with her husband Leonard Woolf from 1914 to 1924.
Christie, creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, is the world’s best-selling novelist. Her play, The Mousetrap, is still running in London, having opened in 1952 with only one brief closure during the COVID lockdown. She once vanished for 11 days, sparking a national manhunt. Her books have sold over two billion copies in more than a hundred languages.
Corner of Great Newport Street and Cranbourn Street
This unusual sculpture puts Agatha Christie's bust inside a giant book - with Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple on the cover. It was unveiled in 2012 on the sixtieth anniversary of The Mousetrap.
The novelist, playwright, and broadcaster is best known for An Inspector Calls, which blends social criticism with time-bending drama. Priestley, a major BBC voice during WWII, was obsessed with time and its illusions.
National Portrait Gallery
According to ChatGPT, Huxley is made is reputation with Brave New World, a chilling vision of a technologically controlled society. He declined a knighthood and experimented with psychedelics late in life. Huxley died on the same day as John F. Kennedy and C. S. Lewis.
National Portrait Gallery
This bronze is a 1981 life mask of Aldous Huxley, based on a work of 1930.
Australian-born Travers, whose real name was Helen Lyndon Goff, was the creator of Mary Poppins, blending whimsy with surprisingly dark undertones. It was rejected by publishers twelve times. She made Walt Disney wait twenty years to buy the rights to Mary Poppins - then disliked the 1964 movie intensely, particularly the animated sequences. Travers was played by Emma Thompson in the biographical Saving Mr. Banks (2013), with Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.
National Portrait Gallery
Born Eric Arthur Blair, George Orwell was a novelist, essayist, and journalist whose clear-eyed prose and fierce moral outlook made him one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Best known for Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Orwell popularised terms including Big Brother, Thought Police, doublethink, and Newspeak. In his 1946 essay The Moon Under Water, Orwell described his ideal pub*. Whilst that local was fictitious at least thirteen Wetherspoons pubs are now called The Moon Under Water.
Orwell's experiences ranged from colonial policing in Burma to fighting (and being wounded) in the Spanish Civil War. A lifelong democratic socialist, he distrusted ideology of all stripes, championing truth, plain language, and individual freedom - values that underpin his enduring relevance. Despite his bleak reputation, friends described him as kind, funny, and surprisingly modest.
BBC Broadcasting House
During WWII George Orwell worked for the BBC's Eastern Service, supervising broadcasts to India to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany. On the wall behind his statue are Orwell's words, "If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear". Donald Trump take note.
*no radios, no music, beer drawn straight from the cask, a garden with a cat, and a landlord who knows your name.
The Poet Laureate is celebrated for accessible verse, nostalgia, and his passionate defence of Victorian architecture. A lifelong train enthusiast, Betjeman helped save St Pancras Station from demolition.
St Pancras Station
Bond is the children’s author who gave the world Paddington Bear, an immigrant with impeccable manners. Inspired by a teddy bear spotted in Selfridges, thirty-five million Paddington books have been sold worldwide. The characters have also appeared in several animated television series, a film series, and a stage musical.
St Mary’s Square, Paddington
Frank was the Jewish diarist whose writing from hiding during the Holocaust became one of the most powerful testimonies of the 20th century. Anne died in a German concentration camp just before the end of World War II. Her diary, published posthumously, is one of the most-read books ever.
British Library
A beloved children’s author, Wilson is remembered for creating the character Tracy Beaker. Her books are often mistaken as 'light' despite dealing with abuse, illness, and neglect.
National Portrait Gallery
No, I hadn't forgotten him, and his statues are everywhere. William Shakespeare is the towering figure of English literature, whose plays and poems span tragedy, comedy, history, and romance, profoundly influencing language and storytelling. He coined hundreds of English words; and his statues almost always show him holding a quill or scroll.
Leicester Square Westminster Abbey
The marble statue in Leicester Square is a copy of the original which stands in Westminster Abbey. Shakespeare was not accorded a memorial in the Abbey until 1740, 124 years after his passing.
Former churchyard of St Mary Aldermanbury
This bust of Shakespeare actually commemorates John Heminge and Henry Condell who collected the Bard's works after his death and published them in First Folio.
Guildhall Art Gallery City of London School, Blackfriars
New Inn Yard (this photo taken when the statue was at Southwark Cathedral, where Shakespeare's brother Edmund is buried).
Shakespeare's Head pub near Liberty
Wimbledon Library Shakespeare's Head pub, Holborn
Parnassus Frieze, Albert Memorial Hammersmith Library
British Library National Portrait Gallery
Wyndham Theatre
London has more statues of Shakespeare than any other writer - a testament to his enduring influence. The majority of them are instantly recognisable as the Bard, sculptors slavishly copying the Droeshout engraving from the First Folio. But they don't compare quite as well to the Chandos portrait (1610) which is the only portrait of Shakespeare that has a good claim to have been painted from life.
First Folio (British Library) Chandos Portrait (National Portrait Gallery)
Finally, let's not forget this chap who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 ....
No, not the guy taking the selfie. He's still waiting for his call from Stockholm. But his blog has recently been getting some views from Sweden, so surely it's only a matter of time.
Incidentally, for those of you thinking - 'surely Oslo not Stockholm?' Well, (pay attention) only the Nobel Peace Prize is decided and awarded in Oslo, the others in Stockholm.
As for Churchill, I've already dealt with him among the Prime Ministers, see - London Statues - British Prime Ministers.
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