Six lockdown reads which have Essex connections that may surprise you

THE BLUE LAGOON - By Henry De Vere Stacpoole

The romance novel was a huge success when it was penned in 1908 by Irish writer Henry De Vere Stacpoole. 

The author had enjoyed a career as a ship's doctor, which had taken him to numerous exotic locations in the South Pacific Ocean - inspiration he later used in The Blue Lagoon.

The book was made into a blockbuster film in 1980 starring Brook Shields.

Stacpoole lived for many years in the village of Stebbing near Dunmow and was even an Essex Justice of the Peace for before relocating to the Isle of Wight in the 1920s.

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN – By John Fowles.

The author of this Victorian-era romance - published in 1969m and famously made into a film in 1981 starring Meryl Steep and Jeremy Irons - was John Robert Fowles, who was born in Leigh.

Fowles studied at the Alleyn Court Preparatory School, in Westcliff, and went onto become a novelist of international renown.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW- By Henry James

This 1898 horror novella, regarded by many as one of the finest ghost stories ever written tells the story of a young governess sent to a country house in Essex to take charge of two orphans.

Unsettled by a sense of intense evil in the house she soon becomes obsessed with the idea that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care.

The book been adapted numerous times in radio drama, film, stage, and TV including a modern adaptation which came out earlier this year entitled The Turning and starring Joely Richardson.

DRACULA – By Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker made Purfleet famous when he included it in his 1897 Gothic horror, Dracula as the location for one of Count Dracula’s estates.

In the novel, the book’s protagonist Jonathan Harker writes: “At Purfleet, on a by-road, I came across just such a place as seemed to be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was for sale. It was surrounded by a high wall. The estate is called Carfax.”

The first edition of Dracula appeared in bookshops in May 1897, priced at six shillings. It was bound in plain yellow cloth with the one-word title in simple red lettering.

EMMA - By Jane Austen

One of Jane Austen’s most popular works, Emma, published in 1815 mentions Southend-on-Sea as the resort where John and Isabella Knightly travel by stagecoach, for their seaside vacation.

In 1996 the book was turned into a blockbuster film starring Gwyneth Paltrow while a remake starring Anna Taylor-Joy in the title role has recently been released.

THE ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS - By Dodie Smith

Dodie Smith was an English children's novelist and playwright, known best for her popular novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956) which was turned into one of the most successful Disney films of all time, as well as other works including I Capture the Castle (1948).

She lived in a grade two listed cottage in Fitchingfield from 1934 until her death in 1990, which she bought for £425.