Eastern US authors?
 

I've decided make a quest out of visiting as many homes/sites of American literary figures as I can. I'm an English major who loves traveling, and besides, I'm looking for places to roadtrip to with my little sister. So, I was wondering if you could help me with compiling my checklist.

Here are the places I've visited so far:
- Herman Melville's Arrowhead (Pittsfield, MA)
- Horace Greeley House (East Poultney, VT)
- Fenimore Art Gallery (on the site of novelist J. Fenimore Cooper's house - Cooperstown, NY)

And here are the places I've added to my checklist which I have yet to visit:
- Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables (Salem, MA)
- Robert Frost's home (Shaftsbury, VT)
- Edgar Allen Poe House (Baltimore, MD)
- Edgar Allen Poe Museum (Richmond, VA)
- Mark Twain House (Hartford, CT)

Any other suggestions for places I can add to my list? I specified "Eastern US" in the title line because my sister and I live in New England, and have somewhat limited resources (college students and all that). But if you know of any must-see places that are a little farther out, please don't hesitate to mention them!

Thank =)

Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst, MA.

Oh, and of course Concord, MA for Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Walden Pond, etc.

You can knock off many if you come to NYC,

He's a different type of literary figure... but, how about... Thomas Jefferson and his home, Monticello, in Charlottesville, VA. Thomas Jefferson's library is across the road. It's filled with his writings and the works of people he collected.

Elizabeth
www.adaysouting.com

Edith Wharton's house:

http://www.edithwharton.org/

Wonderful topic!!

F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are buried in a cemetery in Rockville, MD.

University libraries are a good resource to see original (or microfiches of orig) material:

Fitzgerald (Princeton)
Hemmingway (JFK Library)
Faulkner (Univ of VA)

The Library of Congress houses some amazing things.

Not an American writer, but the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC is so worth a visit. They host the PEN/Faulkner awards every year.

American writer but not literay is Frederick Douglass whose home is open to visitors in DC

Further afield:

Carl Sandburg's home is in western NC and is open to the public. Well worth a visit.

Rowan Oak (Faulkner's home) is in Oxford, Mississippi

Notable authors have come from anywhere and everywhere. Why not just make a list of your own favorites? Anyway, I suggest the Thomas Wolfe home in Asheville, N.C., which was also his family-owned boarding house circa 1900.

I was going to recommend the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, but it appears to be closed for renovations. For future reference :http://www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/poecottage.html

Melville is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:He...stone_1024.jpg

Forgot Jack Kerouac's grave in Lowell -- http://www.ehow.com/how_2108804_visi...acs-grave.html

The NY Times had an aritcle a year ago with autor realted sites in the city marked on a map.

>>Notable authors have come from anywhere and everywhere. Why not just make a list of your own favorites?<<

She did! In the OP!

I love the responses so far and will definitely bookmark this one. Thanks gypsy_grey!

There's also Robert Frost's farm near Franconia NH, complete with the old mailbox on the side of the road simply labeled "Frost".
Washington Irving's Sunnyside, in Tarrytown NY (just outside NYC), and near the town now called Sleepy Hollow.

I've been meaning to find this book
"Traveling literary America, a complete guide to literary landmarks "

In a totally different vein , have you read the novel
"An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England" :)

MASS:
Longfellow National Historic Site in Cambridge http://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm

Henry David Thoreau's cabin in Walden Pond, Concord (though it's a replica) http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/walden/

Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House in Concord http://www.louisamayalcott.org/

Wayside (Nathaniel Hawthorne) in Concord http://www.nps.gov/archive/mima/wayside/index1.htm

Old Manse (Nathaniel Hawthorne) in Concord - the poems etched in 2 of the windows by Hawthorne's wife Sophie using her diamond ring can still be seen http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to...old-manse.html

House of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord http://www.rwe.org/emersonhouse/

His study is now installed inside the Concord Museum. There is also a nice collection of objects that belonged to Thoreau. http://www.concordmuseum.org/explore...ollection.html

Fruitlands Museum in Harvard; which was founded by Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May http://www.fruitlands.org/

Herman Melville's Arrowhead in Pittsfield http://www.mobydick.org/

And as mentioned above, Edith Wharton's Home & Emily Dickinson Museum are also both in MA.
http://www.edithwharton.org/
http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/

In Hartford CT, right next door to Mark Twain House, is the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/

In Portland Maine, Wadsworth-Longfellow House http://www.mainehistory.org/house_overview.shtml

And along the NY Hudson River Valley, is Washington Irving's Sunnyside http://www.hudsonvalley.org/content/view/13/43/

Great and seemingly comprehensive list so far. Will also add the Poe Houses in Philadelphia and Baltimore (have only been to the former).

Besides their homes, you'll find the graves of Alcott, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA.

And in Salem MA besides the House of the Seven Gables, there's the Salem Custom House where Hawthorne worked for a stretch of time.

John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead (birthplace) in Haverhill, MA http://johngreenleafwhittier.com/

John Greenleaf Whittier Home in Amesbury, MA http://www.whittierhome.org/

Whittier is buried in Union Cemetery in Amesbury, as is Valentine Bagley, the subject of his poem "The Captain's Well"
http://www.gravematter.com/johnwhittier.htm
http://www.gravematter.com/bagley-valentine.asp

Carl Sandburg--Flat Rock, NC
Pat Conroy Charleston, SC
New England is "littered", of course. Many more recent/interesting in the South.
ANd the landscape may be much as they left it or are in it now.
And as said, NYC will knock off a lot of 19th and 20th century types.

Walt Whitman House-South Huntington NY

Pearl S. Buck: http://www.psbi.org/site/PageServer?...l_S_Buck_House

Rachel Carson homestead: http://www.rachelcarsonhomestead.org/

And Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown (Philadelphia), Pennsylvania; it's now the site of the Cunningham Piano Company, a fascinating place in its own right: http://www.ushistory.org/germantown/lower/pineplace.htm

We have enjoyed touring in Boston, Cambridge and Concord with a book called the literary Trail of Greater Boston. It has lots of places with literary associations as well as the major sites listed in yk's post.

The William Cullen Bryant homestead in Cummington, MA is a beautiful spot
http://www.thetrustees.org/places-to...homestead.html

I saw the Poe House in Philadelphia mentioned (well worth a trip for the annual celebration, not really much to see the rest of the year), but I don't think anyone mentioned Ben Franklin as a writer.

Also, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, James Michener is from Bucks County (the Michener Museum in Doylestown houses his gorgeous collection of Pennsylvania Impressionist art). Margaret Mead was also from Doylestown, if you want to cover two authors in one very cute town that is definitely worth a visit. Pearl Buck also used to live in Bucks, and her international foundation is still headquartered in that home. In Montgomery County, John O'Hara (Butterfield 8) is from Pottsville, where you can also tour and sample from Yuengling, America's oldest brewery.

Outside of Philadelphia (and not as well known and don't have places to roadtrip to, but IMO worthy of a mention anyway), muckraker Ida Tarbell ("The History of Standard Oil") was from Erie and August Wilson from Pittsburgh. Also, for a mix of religion and writing, Joseph Smith translated the Golden Plates for the Book of Mormon in Pennsylvania.

MLTimes, you bring up an interesting point about residences of authors and composers and such. Agreed that the Poe House in Philadelphia is very plain; I've also visited various composers apartments in Vienna (three Beethoven residences, Schubert's birth and death spots, the Haydn house and such) as well as the WC Handy House in Memphis and Scott Joplin House in St. Louis, which are also spartan. And for some casual tourists, these attractions may not be much of a draw.

However, if you're a Beethoven or Schubert or Poe or Joplin or Handy junkie, just being able to see where these people were born and lived and worked and died -- even if they're pretty much just an empty or minimally decorated series of rooms -- is a major thrill.

http://www.visit-vermont.com/current...nies_list.html has literary homes by state for New England. In NYC you can take several literary tours. http://newyorktalksandwalks.com/tours_literary.html There's even a literary pub crawl. You might want to check out this book about literary landmarks of NY. http://www.amazon.com/Literary-Landm.../dp/0789308541

The home of Edward Gorey, one of the quirkiest writers from the Eastern US, is available for viewing. It's in Yarmouth Port, MA. http://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/

If you're interested in children's literature there's also Marshall, MI (Midwest, I know) where you can pick up a map for the John Bellairs walking tour of town.

Ah, here's a good one -- Rudyard Kipling's house in Brattleboro Vermont. Only occasionally open to the public. http://cather.unl.edu/community.tours.naulakha.html

A friend in Hartford just sent me this article about a new exhibit at the Mark Twain house (also one in Greenwich CT about Lincoln)
http://www.courant.com/community/hc-...,1859257.story


It and the Harriet Beecher Stowe house are on our list of places to visit some weekend this spring or fall.

I don't think Naulakha (the Kipling home) is open to the public for touring. It is operated as a rental property. Sleeps 8, minimum stay of 3 nights.

From time to time Naulakha is open for tours, usually for a few days in the summer.

Forgot to recommend the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia http://www.rosenbach.org. It houses Joyce's manuscript for Ulysses, Maurice Sendak's original drawings (eg, "Where the Wild Things Are"), the only remaining 1st edition of Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac, Bram Stoker's notes and outline for Dracula, and many, many other rare books, notes and letters. It's housed in a gorgeous and historic Rittenhouse Square mansion filled with the original 19th century owners' furniture and art.

I guess I will just keep checking back on the Naulakha web site to see if any tours are listed. I would like to see it. Would also be interested in staying there but that seems less practical

Our local AAA guide magazine just had an article on the Wadsworth Longfellow House in Portland, ME.

I just came across this web site which lists literary sites of interest
http://www.literarytraveler.com/trav...l_listing.aspx