Excited by the challenge, they decided to gather a crew and start reading the book aloud\u00a0once a week. The carried through with their\u00a0plan\u00a0to finish in Dublin\u00a0on Bloomsday, the unofficial June 16 holiday named for\u00a0the novel’s\u00a0protagonist, Leopold Bloom. That’s the day on which the entire story of the famous book takes place.<\/p>\n
“Being in Dublin felt surreal because we felt like we had been in Dublin for seven months, in a way,” Downing said. “The Dublin he describes is still there. There are still some shops, there are bridges, landmarks and statues.<\/p>\n
“We felt like we had landed in the book, and we were having that experience over and over.”<\/p>\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/amd-and-friends-reading-at-the-glasenvin-cemetery.jpg\")
Downing, right, and his friends read the final chapters of Ulysses at the Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, a prominent location in the novel. (Submitted by Antonio Michael Downing)<\/p>\n
Downing and his Ulysses book group certainly aren’t the only people to plan a trip to a favourite author’s hometown, or to a setting that figures prominently in their work.<\/p>\n
Both classic authors like Joyce and contemporary ones like Canadian romance novelist\u00a0Carley Fortune have inspired literary pilgrimages to destinations as far ranging as Dublin is to Barry’s Bay, Ont.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kindred spirits<\/p>\n
Kate Scarth, the chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, says\u00a0she often sees people making the trip to the province to uncover the world of Lucy Maud Montgomery and her most famous series, Anne of Green Gables.<\/p>\n
She notes\u00a0that Green Gables, the real-life setting of the books, has\u00a0been receiving\u00a0visitors as far back\u00a0as 1909, just one year after the first novel was published.<\/p>\n
Scarth herself is one of those visitors \u2014 and she cites a family trip to Green Gables in 1990 as an important moment that drove her fascination with Montgomery.<\/p>\n
The eight-year-old Scarth, who had read the books and loved the 1985 television miniseries starring\u00a0Megan Follows\u00a0as Anne Shirley, recalls her visit to Green Gables as the highlight of the trip to P.E.I. from their home in St. John’s.<\/p>\n
“My parents still laugh about how I kind of gave this breathless tour of Green Gables,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I definitely remember feeling very excited and that kinship like I was there with Anne, or at least in that same place where she and Diana [Barry] had walked and told stories.”<\/p>\n
As a Montgomery scholar and a consultant on the renovation of the Green Gables Visitor\u00a0Centre, Scarth\u00a0now gets to witness other people’s\u00a0literary pilgrimages there.<\/p>\n
“Often in my experience, they’re not disappointed because they’re like, ‘Oh my goodness. She knew this place. She really got it. She’d already brought it to life for me.'”<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/scarth-family-at-green-gables-in-1990.jpg\")
The Scarth family at Green Gables during their visit to P.E.I. in 1990. (Submitted by Kate Scarth)<\/p>\n
Scarth\u00a0says Montgomery made literary pilgrimages herself, visiting writers’ homes in both the United Kingdom and the United States over her lifetime.<\/p>\n
After a trip to Concord, Mass., to see the houses of writers Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Montgomery noted in her journal: “It gave a strange reality to the books of theirs, which I have read, to see those places where they once lived and laboured.”<\/p>\n
But Scarth says for a lot of people, the literary pilgrimage is simply “about being inspired.”<\/p>\n
“Maybe in their scholarly work, but also as writers or artists themselves, they’re wanting to get some of that magic dust almost right from the place. It’s almost like the place holds something.”<\/p>\n
A magical\u00a0bond<\/p>\n
CBC Books<\/a> producer and BookTok creator Bridget Raymundo felt that magic while visiting the Amherst, Mass., home of Emily Dickinson, one of her favourite writers, and meeting the like-minded people who had also made the trip.<\/p>\n “I think everyone who goes there kind of wants to be as great a poet or writer as she was,” Raymundo said. “So it was very nerdy for this English major. I was like, ‘These are my people.'”<\/p>\n For Raymundo, there was also an element of sacredness to her visit. She’s been a fan of Dickinson and her poems since university and even calls Dickinson her poetry “patron saint.”<\/p>\n “It felt very emotional and powerful, especially to also be there with my partner experiencing this queer literary pilgrimage that we were on, to step into the shoes of a poet that I so admired and felt so connected to, even though she’s been gone a long time.”<\/p>\n Blockbuster romance writer Carley Fortune says she’s been struck by the numerous readers she’s met who have travelled to Canadian locales to experience her book settings.<\/p>\n Most of Fortune’s novels are set in Barry’s Bay, Ont.,\u00a0and her third book, This Summer Will Be Different<\/a>, takes place in P.E.I. It even includes a map of Fortune’s favourite spots on the island that her characters frequent throughout the book.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bridget-raymundo-in-front-of-the-emily-dickinson-homestead.JPG\")
Bridget Raymundo stands in front of the Emily Dickinson homestead in Amherst, Mass. (Alexandra Georgelos)<\/p>\n