By the Seashore: How Writers Discovered the Sea

Follow Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Tove Jansson and other classic writers to the beach and experience the landscape through the eyes of a writer.

✓ 2024 Finlandia Nominee in Non-fiction

✓ 2024 Lauri Jäntti Prize Honorary Award!

✓ One of the ten best nonfiction books of 2024 – Suomen Kuvalehti

✓ The book has inspired readers to take sailing trips to the Stockholm archipelago and other captivating landscapes.

✓ Thematically, combining place and culture, drawing comparisons to the books of Mia Kankimäki, Dorthe Nors and Nina Burton.

By the Seashore is a fascinating journey through salt-scented cultural history and to the authors' favourite beaches. Jane Austen adventured along the south coast of England, Marcel Proust returned year after year to the shimmering light of Normandy, and Tove Jansson created her own paradise on an island in the Gulf of Finland. The magic of the beaches is part of our shared experience and our relationship with nature. But how long will we be able to experience our beloved beaches as they are now? This was already being pondered by August Strindberg in the late 19th century, when industry and tourism were shaping the Stockholm archipelago.

By the Seashore is a gripping and surprising account of why beaches have become landscapes of emotion, safe havens as well as  islands of adventure.

PRAISE:

“Written in beautiful, polished language, this work explores what a landscape does to a person – and vice versa. Its surprising, original perspective broadens the topic from literature to the environment that people have shaped to their liking over centuries. A small, great book."- 2024 Finlandia Prize Jury

"In this captivatingly paced nonfiction book, the seashore appears both as an emotional image and a picturesque landscape." - Turun Sanomat newspaper, Kaisa Kurikka, Finland