WRITERS' HOUSES

Over at Writers’ Houses, Ann Napolitano writes about...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:21:36 -0400

Over at Writers’ Houses, Ann Napolitano writes about visiting Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home:

…the obvious assumption would be that something sinister had happened to Flannery during that period to alter her, or force her to grow up too quickly. But, as the tour guide assured me, and as I’d learned from my own research, that simply wasn’t the case. Flannery had, on the whole, a happy childhood. She simply did away with the trappings of childhood as soon as possible. She became herself earlier than most of us do. The vision of a fierce five-year Flannery pleases me, but it also rings true. The true Flannery could never be denied, not even by childish impulses.

This week: Mira Ptacin writes about visiting E.B. White’s...

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 13:06:10 -0500

This week: Mira Ptacin writes about visiting E.B. White’s home, the Charles Dickens Museum reopens, and Judy Blume owns a gorgeous house in Florida. Click through for more.

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 10

explore-blog: E. B. White’s ice skates, captured by Mira...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:48:47 -0500

explore-blog:

E. B. White’s ice skates, captured by Mira Ptachin on a visit to his house. He was a man who knew how to celebrate the joy of life.

On the Maine farm, White wrote that he found himself “suddenly...

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:41:54 -0500

On the Maine farm, White wrote that he found himself “suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens … a time of enchantment.” In his writing shed, White said he was a “wilder” and “healthier man.”

The cabin is plain and encloses only what a writer truly needs: the urge to communicate something, the means to record words, and solitude. There is the woodburning stove White used during the cold winter months, and in a very old Abercrombie & Fitch box, now used as a shelf, are a pair of loafers that were there before the new tenants moved in, a box of sharpened pencils, and an old tin can full of rusty paperclips.

Mira Ptacin in her new guest post, up now: The Way Life Should Be: The House of E. B. White

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 9 There is good news...

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:48:14 -0500

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 9

There is good news and bad news in this week’s round up. The bad news? Poe’s house vandalized, Pearl S. Buck’s house damaged, and Eliot’s writing desk stolen. The good news? A tattoo of the Margaret Mitchell House.

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The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 8 In this...

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:16:50 -0400

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 8

In this week’s round up: the Brontë Parsonage gets a makeover, Mo Yan’s hometown plans a theme park, and Julian Fellowes celebrates Edith Wharton’s 150th birthday.

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The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 7 | Writers’...

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:18:38 -0400

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 7 | Writers’ Houses

In this week’s round up: Mira Ptacin visits E. B. White’s house, Charles Dickens’ great-great-grandson plans a visit to a pub his great-great-grandfather famously reviled, and Etgar Keret writes about his thin, triangular house in Warsaw.

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The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 6 In this...

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:59:50 -0400

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 6

In this week’s round up: Dickens’ two bedroom garden apartment for sale, a revival plan for the Poe House, and tweets from Mira Ptacin about her visit to E.B. White’s house.

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The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 5 In this...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 13:55:00 -0400

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 5

In this week’s round up: more shake ups at the Poe House in Baltimore, Poets.org interviews James Merrill’s biographer, Langdon Hammer, and J.K. Rowling puts her house up for sale (showing us that, for her, a secret door is completely common). Click through for more.

Special thanks to Michelle Legro for the photo of Victor Hugo’s bedroom.

"It happens all the time, and where it gets quite interesting is in your own house, because what..."

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:15:04 -0400

“It happens all the time, and where it gets quite interesting is in your own house, because what leaps out at you is so often conjoined with your preferences and your history. Here, the conscious and the subconscious, intent and accident, will and grace, often intersect. In some respects the writer’s house is like an artist’s model. She is chosen, she is posed, but like all elemental beauties, hers is beyond your design and therefore a continuing source of elevation and surprise.”

- Mark Helprin - Bumping Into the Characters - NYTimes.com

Baltimore sneaks Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum’s report...

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:38:00 -0400

Baltimore sneaks Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum’s report past public | Baltimore Post-Examiner

theparisreview: Flannery O’Connor’s bedroom, where the author...

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:37:17 -0400

theparisreview:

Flannery O’Connor’s bedroom, where the author did most of her writing. The aluminum crutches shown in the photograph were to help the author walk around her ancestral farm, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia, due to systemic lupus erythematosus. While only expected to live for five more years after the diagnosis, O’Connor survived for fourteen more, completing more than two dozen short stories and two novels until her death on August 3, 1964, at the age of thirty-nine.

Notes from Underground: A Video of Gay Talese's Office : The New Yorker

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:56:01 -0400

Notes from Underground: A Video of Gay Talese's Office : The New Yorker:

Under the townhouse where the legendary writer Gay Talese and his wife, Nan, have lived for over half a century is what Talese calls his “subterranean think tank.” Every day, Talese leaves his home, locks his door, walks down an elegantly curved outdoor staircase through a separate entrance, and enters this lush underground office.

glacenoire: Brontë Parsonage

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:11:02 -0400

glacenoire:

Brontë Parsonage

i-shot: Detail from weathered grave marker. {Poe’s house....

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 15:38:58 -0400

i-shot:

Detail from weathered grave marker.

{Poe’s house. Baltimore. No. 5.}

Those lucky enough to see the house today, before the doors...

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:34:00 -0400

Those lucky enough to see the house today, before the doors closed were glad they made it but were shocked by the stripped down feel of the beloved museum. A number of artifacts, such as the bronze plaque from the Edgar Allan Poe school and the lockets of hair from Poe and his wife Virginia, were gone. These and other artifacts were retrieved by the private collectors who had lent them to the museum. It is unclear what items, if any, will eventually return.

(via Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe House is nevermore | Baltimore Post-ExaminerBaltimore Post-Examiner)

thetinhouse: Herman Melville died one hundred and twenty one...

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:39:07 -0400

thetinhouse:

Herman Melville died one hundred and twenty one years ago today.

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 4 In this...

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:52:00 -0400

The Weekly Guide to Writers’ Houses, Issue 4

In this week’s round up: the NYPL recreates Charles Dickens’ library of fake books, Patti Smith visits the Brontë parsonage, and the Poe House “hopefully temporarily” closes.

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"A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it’s better than a new one."

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 14:37:52 -0400

“A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it’s better than a new one.”

- Willa Cather

"For Hallowe’en, Frances and I made a witches’ room out of one of the basement rooms of her house at..."

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:19:31 -0400

“For Hallowe’en, Frances and I made a witches’ room out of one of the basement rooms of her house at 8 Howard Place. I stayed overnight on occasions like this when we had something to celebrate or some parts in a play to rehearse. Hallowe’en was celebrated by a roaring fire in the handsome old fireplace of a room which must once have been a large kitchen or servants’ hall in that thrilling house next door to Robert Louis Stevenson’s birthplace (which was No. 10). I was familiar not only with No. 8 but also with the Stevenson house, by our time a museum. But I have also seen the house in my mature years. I think it altogether charming, possibly mid-Victorian, a town house in a row. Of course it had nothing of the more impressive Edinburgh architecture of Adam, the eighteenth-century lines of Stevenson’s later home at Heriot Row, but to me, and to Frances, it was full of mystery and stimulants to the imagination such as the equivalent, next door, of the old room where, with the lights out, before a flickering fire, we were Hallowe’en witches.”

- Muriel Spark on Robert Louis Stevenson’s house in Edinburgh, from her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae.