American writers have an enormous impact on our culture, some are so famous that the homes in which they created many of their masterpieces have become museums for the masses to visit. People can take tours of their homes to learn more about the writers themselves and take in the environment in which some of the greatest pieces of American literature were contrived.
The Mark Twain House & Museum
One of America’s most influential writers lived in a massive American High Gothic mansion that measured 11,500 square feet and is three stories located in Hartford, Connecticut. Mark Twain, or Samuel Clemens, and wife Olivia Clemens, tasked architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design their home. The house was built in 1874, and the Clemens lived there until 1891. During this time, Mark Twain wrote one of the most iconic pieces of American literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and its precursor, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. U.S. President Chester Arthur hired the same people who worked on designing the house’s exotic interior to redecorate the state rooms of the White House. The house will be celebrating its 150th anniversary later this year, so if you happen to be in Hartford, Connecticut this would be a good time to visit.
Emily Dickinson’s Homestead
The reclusive poet wrote many of her most famous poems in her house in Amherst, Massachusetts where she was born and lived much of her life. The Homestead was bought by Emily’s father for a ripe $1,500 in 1830 (roughly $51,000 today) and Emily was born shortly after. The homestead was sold several years after Emily was born due to the family’s financial situation, but they shared the residency with the people who bought the house until 1840 when they moved out. Emily’s father purchased the homestead in its entirety in 1855. Emily Dickinson lived there from 1855 until she died in 1886. The Homestead consists of the Emily Dickinson House and the Evergreens, a house next door where Emily’s brother Austin and his family lived. Both have been preserved as one museum. Emily Dickinson mostly kept to herself outside family members, and she would come out of her house to visit her brother next door or help tend to the family’s garden.
The Hemingway Home & Museum
Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West, Florida for eight years in the 1930s before he moved to Cuba and his old house is now a huge tourist destination for people visiting the Keys. It is where he wrote some of his most famous works including parts of A Farewell to Arms, To Have and Have Not, and the short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. People can take tours of the house and see Hemingway’s office where he conducted his writing. There is also a swimming pool with a six-foot brick wall around it so that Hemingway could swim nude. He regularly hosted boxing matches on his lawn and kept peacocks on the property. Nowadays, the property is inhabited by approximately sixty polydactyl (six-toed) cats who descend from a white cat named Snow White, gifted to Hemingway by a ship’s captain. The cats are all named after celebrities such as Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. The cats also have their cemetery in the garden.
The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum
The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum is located in Baltimore, Maryland. The house is more modest in size compared to the other houses in this article, and Poe only lived there for three years. Poe lived there during his early twenties, but it is unknown which works were written there. His most famous work, The Raven would not be written until a decade after moving out of the house, and that poem is also where the Baltimore Ravens get their name from. In 2020, the Poe House was entered into the American Library Association’s United For Libraries Literary Landmarks Register, and it was the first historical site in Maryland to be entered into the list.
William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak
The Nobel-prize-winning novelist resided on 33 acres in Oxford, Mississippi for much of his adult life in his residence Rowan Oak. It was here that Faulkner wrote some of his most famous works including As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom! and other pieces of work too. Rowan Oak inspired much of Faulkner’s work for more than four decades. People can take tours of the house year-round except for major holidays. In Faulkner’s office, the plot outline of A Fable is written on the walls in pencil by Faulkner himself. There were several additions and renovations to the house while William Faulkner lived there, including a bedroom that would become his wife’s Estelle’s. William Faulkner disliked air conditioning so much that Estelle installed an air conditioning unit in the bedroom the day after her husband’s funeral.
This article provides some of the most impactful American authors whose houses you can visit. You might find some more practical to visit than others; there are many reasons to visit Key West other than seeing Ernest Hemingway’s house. Regardless of why you decide to go and which author’s house you visit, it is a fantastic way to learn about America’s greatest and most important writers and experience a piece of their lives up close.
Check out more of Mark Twain’s writings here.
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