http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/bars-every-book-nerd-needs-to-visit
Notable Patrons: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis
This University pub, which dates way back to the mid-17th century, served as the official meeting place for Tolkien, Lewis, and the rest of their writing group, called the Inklings. From 1933 to the early 1950s, the group met weekly in the Rabbit Room, the bar’s private back lounge, to distribute and critique each other’s unfinished manuscripts.
Today, the walls of the cozy Rabbit Room are decorated with bits of memorabilia, framed photos of the authors, and a signed document with a note — “The undersigned, having just partaken in your ham, have drunk to your health” — from the authors to the former owner.
Notable Patrons: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady
This kitschy North Beach bar was the stomping grounds of some Beat generation heavy-hitters, and the alley behind it is even named after Kerouac. Sitting right across the street from the renowned City Lights Bookstore, it now serves as a monument to jazz, art, poetry, and the creative lifestyle. It also serves some pretty stiff drinks.
3. White Horse Tavern (New York City)
Notable Patrons: Dylan Thomas, James Baldwin, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer
The White Horse Tavern opened in 1880 and was known for being a longshoreman’s hangout until the 1950s, when Welsh poet Dylan Thomas started coming around. It is most famously (and morbidly) known as the place of Thomas’ last drink; in November of 1953, after downing eighteen shots of whiskey, he collapsed on the sidewalk and later died at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Still, the West Village tavern remained a favorite spot for the literary set, attracting writers and poets to this day.
Notable Patrons: Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote
Hotel Monteleone has hosted so many writers in its history that the Friends of the Library Association designated it an official literary landmark in 1999. Its impressive guest roster has included some of the South’s most influential writers, and Truman Capote famously claimed to have actually been born in a Hotel Monteleone room. (The hotel denies it, though Capote’s mother was living there during her pregnancy.)
The hotel and lounge are historic landmarks of the French Quarter and must-sees, but visitors can expect to spend a good amount of cash when doing so.
Notable Patrons: Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde
The literary history of Kennedy’s is especially interesting because it includes both patrons and employees. Back when it was also a grocery store, a young Wilde earned a wage stocking the shelves. Today the pub is just a pub — and a college one, at that – but visitors can enjoy a beer at the same marble bar where old friends Beckett and Joyce sat.
12. La Rotonde (Paris, France)
Notable Patrons: Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Parisian cafe was a favorite during the American ex-pat era, and its popularity is noted by frequent patron (you guessed it) Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises: “No matter what cafe in Montparnasse you ask a taxi-driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde.” That popularity has not waned, but travelers looking to visit will have to wait a few more months. The cafe closed in January for renovations, and is scheduled to reopen in March 2014.
