Cambridge
Cambridge is the English novel's favourite place to send a clever young man who has not yet decided what he is. E. M. Forster went up to King's College in 1897 and used the university in The Longest Journey as a measuring rod for the compromises that follow. Charles Darwin studied at Christ's, and the books he read there shaped a mind that would spend twenty years testing an idea.
The university library is a legal-deposit library, which means it has received a copy of almost every book published in the United Kingdom for centuries. For a reader trying to date an edition or trace a nineteenth-century reprint, its catalogues are more useful than any walking tour.
A library to check
- Cambridge University Library — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Cambridge
- The Longest Journey — E. M. Forster, 1907. Forster's most personal novel, and the one that shows what he was arguing with for the rest of his life.
- On the Origin of Species — Charles Darwin, 1859. A scientific classic that can still be read as an argument rather than a monument.
- The Voyage of the Beagle — Charles Darwin, 1839. The best travel book ever written by a scientist, and the raw material of the Origin.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.