What is St. Augustine Fiction?
St. Augustine has a rich literary history. For information about authors who have lived in St. Augustine, please visit the St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library. Our agreement with SAHS is that we do not collect in that area, but instead focus on the 270+ works of fiction that have been written about our city (or have scenes in the county).
This guide serves as a finding aid to the genre of St. Augustine Fiction, which is a collecting foci for the Proctor Library. Although a "special collection," not all books are located in Rare Books, Floridiana & Institutional Repository.
"Books Published in the . . . " are the primary access points. There are tags for the book's genres, time period(s), and geographic location(s) in St. Johns County, which were identified as important information in previous versions of this guide. A map shows the exact or approximate geographic location of the most important local place featured in the book.
Some of the books in this genre are mentioned in guides or bibliographies to Florida literature and can be found listed under "References" when pertinent. If you know of a book that should be included in this guide that is not listed, please email Katherine Owens, Special Collections Librarian (email in the footer).
An interesting note is that the Hotel Ponce de Leon (Flagler College) was a very popular location to write about from the 1880's to the 1910's. Most of these are romances of a happy couple staying at or meeting in the Ponce and are hence "contemporary" fiction of that time period. Most are not examples of great literature, but offer an interesting vignette into the mores of the period.
Thank you to our Summer 2014 intern, Lisa Vallen, who put together the first version of this guide.
For help creating this version, thanks are due to: Spring 2022 intern, Nicolette Cisko; Summer 2022 work-study students, Lindsey Williams and Sarah Alexander; Fall 2022 intern, Roscoe Saunders; Fall 2022 work-study student, Amanda Gattshall; Spring 2023 intern Grace Demetropoulos; Fall 2024 interns Grace Rinier and Emily Backert; and Fall 2022 to Fall 2024 work-study student, Jean-Marc Augusty.
The Spanish laid-out the street system of St. Augustine in the First Spanish Period. They did not give streets formal names, but rather referred to…
Before the construction of the lighthouse, there were a series of wooden watchtowers in the area. The earliest reference to watchtowers dates back to…
This gate's history is directly related to the Cubo Line Defense which was a log stockade dating back to the very beginning of the 18th century.First…
This creek first appeared and was named on the Antonio Arredondo map of 1737. There is no definitive answer of who this lake is named after. It used…
Completed in March of 1847 and owned by Burroughs E. Carr, it was one of the finest hotels of its time. It started off with seventeen rooms as the…
Disclaimer: The Lipona Plantation is not researched extensively and many accounts of its history are varying. This page attempts to present the most…
Opened on December 25, 1888, the Alcazar is the sister hotel to Henry Flagler's Hotel Ponce de Leon. It was designed by the same architects, and…
The Governor's House got its start in 1598 as the Royal Governor of East Florida's residence when Governor Gonzalo Mendez de Canzo built his home on…
Located on Rattlesnake Island and built between 1740 and 1742 by the Spanish to prevent the British from sailing up the Matanzas River to attack the…