The writing desk Jane Austen used to write Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Sense and Sensibility, will be shown for the first time next month when the British Library opens a new exhibition, Chapter and Verse: 1,000 years of English literature.
If it steals the show from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre manuscript or the Beatles' lyrics, it won't be due to size and splendour. It is a plain, hinged wooden box with a drawer that still holds her tiny, wire-framed "granny specs". Its fascination lies purely in its link with her books, and in what it says about the way she wrote - perched at a table in a parlour, her papers easily hidden away.
• The British Library (020-7412 7332), 96 Euston Road NW1, March 10 to October 15. Entry: adults £3, concessions £2, under 18s free.
Like Jane Austen, the Brontë Sisters used portable wooden writing desks, propped on a table wherever there was time and space to write. Their home at Haworth still contains the three boxes Charlotte, Emily and Anne filled with little hoards of personal possessions.
Charlotte's was polished rosewood with silver trim, held pens (quill and steel nibbed), seals and sealing wax, an invitation to a reception and a tiny book of devotions. Anne's was inlaid mahogany, lined in velvet, with brass fittings. Emily's, well-used and ink stained, held some Belgian bills, letters and coins, five newspaper reviews of Wuthering Heights and, most poignant of all, a letter from her publisher urging her not to send her second - now lost - novel till she was "well satisfied with it".
• Brontë Parsonage (01535 642323), Haworth, Keighley, West Yorkshire BD22 8DR. Open daily, Oct 1 - March 31, 11am - 5pm; April 1 - Sep 30, 10am - 5pm. Adults £4.50, concessions £3.30, children (5-16) £1.40.
George Bernard Shaw, ever the rationalist, had a desk to write at, one to read at and another, possibly favourite, at the bottom of the garden. Fixed into a corner of his revolving summerhouse, it is a curiously flimsy little desk for such a heavyweight (but witty) dramatist, critic and writer. Alongside are his cane chair, wastepaper bin, fire and fold-away bed, where G (don't "George" me) BS would stretch out and think, or nap.
What he was thinking during his 44 years at Shaw's Corner was nothing less than a political revolution (Brecht called him a terrorist who made humour his weapon) spelt out in thousands of articles, lectures and letters, as well as all the plays: Heartbreak House, Pygmalion (an Oscar-winning film even before it became My Fair Lady), Saint Joan, The Apple Cart and much more. When he died, 50 years ago this year, aged 94, he was still writing for the theatre.
• Shaw's Corner (01438 820307), Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire AL6 9BX. Open April 1 -Oct 29, Wed -Sun. Adults £3.50, children £1.75, family £8.75. The National Trust and RADA plan anniversary events in London and Shaw's Corner.
Arthur Ransome claimed Swallows and Amazons "almost wrote itself". He'd fallen out with the family of children who inspired Swallow's crew and wanted to reclaim the book as his own childhood memories of the Lake District: "No matter where I was, wandering about the world - in my mind's eye [I] could see the beloved skyline of great hills."
His wanderings (war correspondent in Russia during the Revolution) and restless life mean there isn't a Ransome house to visit. But his widow, Evgenia (Trotsky's secretary when they met) gave his desk and prized possessions to the Museum of Lakeland Life in Kendal. It is kept on show in a special room surrounded by his fishing rods and pipes, sketchbooks and, photos, a Jolly Roger flag, and the chess set he used in Russia (to beat Lenin, once, he said).
• Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry (01539 722464), Abbot Hall, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 5AL. Open daily Feb 10 - Dec 22. Entry: adults £3, seniors £2.80, children £1.50, family £7.50.
Hugh MacDiarmid, Scotland's modern-day national poet, died 21 years ago. His home in the Borders, a basic, two-room labourer's cottage, looks as though he left it yesterday. The table he wrote at (always in foolscap, covering every inch of space) and most of the well-worn furniture came from second-hand sales at nearby Biggar; but it was better than the fruit-boxes the family used during their penniless stay in Shetland.
• Brownsbank (01899 221050), Candy Mill, Biggar, Strathclyde. Open strictly by appointment. No charge, but donations welcome.
Charles Dickens is too big a writer and character to have left just one desk. There seem to be half a dozen dotted around. One of the most famous is in the Dickens Centre at Rochester, the city Dickens knew from childhood, returned to once he'd made his fortune, and used as the backdrop for Great Expectations and Edwin Drood. The desk is part of a large-scale recreation of the portrait known as The Dream, in which Dickens sits daydreaming while his characters reappear around him.
• The Charles Dickens Centre (01634 844176), Eastgate House, High Street, Rochester, Kent ME1 1EW. Open daily year round (except Christmas). Adults £3.50, seniors and children £2.50.
Dylan Thomas called his bright-blue workshed at Laugharne "The Shack", a "water and tree room on the cliff". Seated at the simple red table, he could see the "heron priested" Taf Estuary spread out below, while he wrote - and re-wrote - Under Milk Wood and the lines to his dying father, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
His other desk, inherited from his father, stands in the parlour of the nearby Boat House, where he lived with Caitlin and their children.
• Dylan Thomas Boat House (01994 427420), Laugharne, Carmarthenshire SA33 4SD. Open all year (except Christmas). Adults £2.75, seniors £1.75, children (7-14) £1.
Thomas Hardy's study in his last home, Max Gate (the singularly charmless house he designed himself), was moved lock, stock and desk to Dorset County Museum after his widow died in 1935. Now the museum, in Dorchester (Hardy's Casterbridge), has moved it upstairs to a first-rate new Thomas Hardy gallery. In the book-lined study, his desk is laid out with his blotter and "dipping" pens, each inscribed, by him, with the name of the books they had written: Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude The Obscure and The Woodlanders.
• Dorset County Museum (01305 262735), High West Street, Dorchester, Dorset DT2 7LG. Open Mon - Sat all year; Sunday in July and August. Adults £3.30, seniors and students £2.20, children £1.60.
Rudyard Kipling's desk at Bateman's in Sussex is solidly "establishment", preserved pen for pen as he left it. "I always kept certain gadgets on my work table," he wrote, "a long lacquered canoe-shaped pen tray, full of brushes and dead 'fountains', a wooden box held clips and bands, another, a tin one, pins; all manner of unneeded essentials from emery paper to small screw drivers - an inky foot rule - left and right of the table were two big globes."
It sits in serene peace, overlooking classic English countryside where Bombay-born Kipling finally felt at home. The Jungle Book and Just So Stories were already in print when he came here, but once he'd set out his writing table he dreamed up Puck of Pook's Hill and his eternally popular If...
• Bateman's (01435 882302), Burwash, Etchingham, East Sussex TN19 7DS. Open April 1 - Nov 1, Sat - Wed, open Good Friday. adults £5, children £2.50, family £12.50.
Lucy Boston always wrote in pencil at the dining-room table, facing the French windows where she fed the birds, and with her back to the huge hearth of her mysterious 12th-century home in the Fens.
As everyone knows who grew up on The Children of Green Knowe, (or heard it broadcast last Christmas) this is where young Tolly finds himself inside - the ground floor of a castle - furnished with "comfortable polished old-fashioned things as though living in castles was quite ordinary". Except that great-grandma Oldknow and her ancient house turn out to be anything but ordinary.
The polished old-fashioned table and chair where Lucy wrote, the attic filled with ghostly children's toys and the lovely moated gardens are kept exactly as she restored - and Tolly found - them.
• The Manor (01480 463134), Hemingford Grey, Huntingdon PE18 9BN. Open year round by appointment. Adults £4, seniors £3.50, children £1.50.
Agatha Christie's typewriter, a 1937 Remington portable, takes pride of place among family photos, portraits, bits of porcelain, theatre programmes and early editions in the Agatha Christie Memorial Room in Torquay.
Her desk isn't there, so this one is a cheat (so what: critics claimed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd had a "rotten cheat ending"), but the typewriter was more important. Most of her 80-odd books and 19 plays were typed straight on to it, she said, using three fingers not two.
There is something deliciously sinister about the quiet, panelled room in Torre Abbey, Torquay's oldest building. Poirot or Miss Marple could appear any second.
• Torre Abbey (01803 293593), King's Drive, Torquay, Devon TQ2 5JE. Open daily Apr 1 - Nov 1. Adults £3, seniors £2.50, children (8-15) £1.50.
• Sally Varlow's Traveller's Guide to Writers' Britain will be reissued in May by Prion Books at £15.
