Although we move with the times here in Manchester, constantly adapting to societal changes and needs, we do love our history. Culturally, Manchester is incredibly rich, in terms of architecture, music and, indeed, literature, and now Manchester has been named one of the most written-about cities in the UK – not only does the city love literature, but literature loves Manchester!
Printing experts at Aura Print have combed through the vast expanse of the Google Books corpus (a repository boasting 25 million books) to identify the cumulative mentions of 31 prominent UK cities across books spanning from 1920 to 2019.
Manchester has claimed the fourth spot whipping up an impressive 23,578,466 mentions in books over the past 100 years.
The website states: “Infused by a revolutionary spirit, the great city in the ‘south of the north’, home to a rich industrial past and hidden quarters, serves as a wellspring of inspiration for Gothic and horror writers.”
The decade in which Manchester was most written about was the 1920s, with 1,482,881 mentions. Some honourable mentions include Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell in 1848, The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell in 1936, and Vurt by Jeff Noon in 1993.
Manchester was beaten to the top spot by three southern nemeses: London, Oxford and Cambridge, which is hardly surprising, since these cities seem to pop up in most English literature since the beginning of time. Think Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Death of an Expert Witness, His Dark Materials – we could go on, but you get the point.
As the only northern English city in the list above number nine, where Liverpool picks up some slack, we feel fairly justified in claiming the ‘excellent‘ score given to Manchester earlier this year by UNESCO, making it a UK City of Literature. Manchester also celebrated its literary richness with its Festival of Libraries, highlighting the wonderful library spaces we have here in Greater Manchester, where you can get lost in book after book.