Graffiti artists aren’t particularly known for their bookishness. After all, when you spend your nights out on the street as a graphic art vigilante, you’re missing important time that could be spent snuggled up in bed with a book. So after we saw this spectacular Isaac Asimov portrait, we decided to go hunting for graffiti with a distinct literary bent — and in fact, the world abounds with bookish street art, from portraits of favorite authors to stenciled and scribbled quotes to representations of beloved characters. Click through to see twenty five of our favorite finds, from the reverent to the blatantly mocking, and let us know which author’s likeness you’d most like to stencil onto the walls of your city in the comments — or get out there and contribute to our collection.
Isaac Asimov, Rome [via]
Emily Dickinson [via]
Allen Ginsberg, Boulder, CO [via]
Edgar Allan Poe in a cute hat, Paris, France [via]
Jack Kerouac, Boulder, CO [via]
Alice in Wonderland, Leake St Cans Festival, London [via]
Shakespeare in shades, Nolita, NYC [via]
Arthur Rimbaud, Paris, France [via]
Toni Morrison, Vitoria, Spain
The Little Prince [via]
Virginia Woolf [via]
John Steinbeck, West Allis, WI [via]
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia [via]
An ode to Kurt Vonnegut, Mt. Vernon, NY [via]
Samuel Beckett, London [via]
Franz Kafka in living color [via]
Hunter S. Thompson [via]
Kafka’s metamorphoses, Prague [via]
The death of Tintin, Paris [via]
Sylvia Plath, Portland, OR [via]
A tiny Nikolai Gogol [via]
Dante Alighieri [via]
Robert Frost, London [via]
Charles Dickens, London [via]
Walt Whitman [via]