What is the Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania?
The Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania is a graphic display of the literary history of our Commonwealth. On the map you’ll find writers of novels, plays, short stories, technical manuals, legislation, children’s literature, just about anything you could imagine connected to writing. We have used this geographic method of organizing our authors to show the breadth of places in Pennsylvania that have fostered the writers of the state, not only our greatest cities, but the rural hamlets in the mountains and every place in between. Biographies on PA's cultural figures can also be accessed from sortable lists in the Biographies section. Pick up your mouse and begin your literary explorations of Pennsylvania!
How to Navigate the Map
While on the Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania page, roll your cursor over the map. You’ll notice that counties light up as you pass the pointer over them, and that below the map you’ll see the name of the county, its county seat, and a picture and brief note about the person we believe is the best known literary figure associated with that county. After exploring the counties in this fashion, left click on a county of interest. This will take you to a map of just that county. You’ll see that some towns will be blue (your clue that something else awaits you) or black (nothing waiting just yet, but we’ll be working on it). Run your pointer over a blue-lettered town and you’ll see that pictures and brief descriptions of authors connected to that town will appear on the map. If you roll the pointer over the newspaper icon on the map, you’ll see a brief description of the earliest newspaper known to have been published in that county.
To the right of the county map, you’ll see a number of icons. The book icon will take you to Penn State’s Digital Bookshelf where you can see articles relating to the county that you've selected. The newspaper icon will take you to Penn State Libraries' newspaper collections. The map icon takes you to Penn State Libraries' map collections. Finally, the icon of Benjamin Franklin will take you to biographical sketches of the featured literary or cultural figure from your county.
Go to the Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania