William Faulkner hanging out in Oxford, MS
A recent article in the Montgomery Advertiser describes fans visiting Monroeville, AL, in honor of To Kill a Mockingbird–and it’s got me wondering: What are your favorite literary destinations?
Off the top of my head, I can think of several. There’s always Oxford, MS, with Faulkner’s Rowan Oak. Eudora Welty’s home is a few hours away in Jackson. Near Nashville, you can visit Carnton Plantation, the setting of Robert Hicks’ The Widow of the South. Concord, MA, is home to Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, the Mark Twain House is a couple hours away in Hartford, CT, and Edith Wharton’s fantastic estate is in Lenox, MA.
Staying in NYC after BEA? The New York Times has a created an interactive map filled with Manhattan literary destinations. Or, an online search for “literary pilgrimage” provides plenty of options.
I’ll be in San Francisco over Memorial Day weekend, and my trip itinerary includes its own sort of literary pilgrimage–to the famous City Lights Bookstore, founded by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953.
Got any good literary destinations? Share your ideas in the comments.
Nice. Here are a few such places I’ve enjoyed:
Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts
Jane Austen’s house in Chawton in Hampshire, England
the Carl Sandburg home in Flat Rock, North Carolina
Down House, Darwin’s home in Downe, Kent, England
the L. M. Montgomery house on Prince Edward Island
Ashdown Forest, East Sussex, the real site that inspired the 100 Acre Wood in the Pooh stories
Bateman’s, Rudyard Kipling’s house in Burwash, East Sussex
Cross Creek, the home of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling), outside Gainesville, FL is a place I return to again and again.
Some other southern favorites:
Flannery O’Connor’s home in Savannah, Georgia
Mark Twain’s Hannibal, Mississippi
Mercer House in Savannah, Georgia (setting for much of Jon Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)
Hemingway’s home in Key West, Florida
Faulker House in Pirate’s Alley in New Orleans, Louisiana
French Quarter apartments of Tennessee Williams in New Orleans, Louisiana
Anne Rice’s former home in the Garden District of New Orleans, Lousiana
I am planning on a literary journey this summer with trips to:
Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, Connecticut
Edward Gorey’s House in Yarmouth Port, MA
Robert Frost’s house in Derry, NH
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house in Hartford, CT
Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, MA
I have to say that I am extremely jealous of Joanna because she has been to both Tennessee Williams’ and William Faulkner’s houses. Both of whom I believe are literary gods!