Writers' homes (sometimes writer's, author's or literary houses) are locations where writers lived. Frequently, these homes are preserved as

historic house museum A historic house museum is a house of historic significance that is preserved as a museum. Historic furnishings may be displayed in a way that reflects their original placement and usage in a home. Historic house museums are held to a variety of ...

s and literary tourism destinations, called writer's home museums, especially when the homes are those of famous literary figures. Frequently these buildings are preserved to communicate to visitors more about the author than their work and its historical context. These exhibits are a form of biographical criticism. Visitors of the sites who are participating in literary tourism, are often fans of the authors, and these fans find deep emotional and physical connections to the authors through their visits. Sites include a range of activities common to cultural heritage sites, such as

living history Living history is an activity that incorporates historical tools, activities and dress into an interactive presentation that seeks to give observers and participants a sense of stepping back in time. Although it does not necessarily seek to ree ...

, museum exhibits, guided tours and

poetry reading A poetry reading is a public oral recitation or performance of poetry. Reading poetry aloud allows the reader to express their own experience through poetry, changing the poem according to their sensibilities. The reader uses pitch and stress, a ...

s. ''New York Times'' commentator Anne Trubek counted 73 such houses in the United States. The tradition of preserving houses or sites important to famous authors has a long history: in the 14th century Petrarch's birthplace was preserved, despite Petrarch barely spending time there as a child. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century France, photojournalism which represented authors homes created an increased public interest in writers' private lives, making their homes destinations. The public popular imagination around these literary homes is a central theme of the satirical novel '' An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England''.

Notable homes

* Orchard House (

Louisa May Alcott Louisa May Alcott (; November 29, 1832March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel ''Little Women'' (1868) and its sequels ''Good Wives'' (1869), ''Little Men'' (1871), and ''Jo's Boys'' ...

) *

Jane Austen's House Museum Jane Austen's House Museum is a small independent museum in the village of Chawton near Alton, Hampshire, Alton in Hampshire. It is a writer's house museum occupying the 17th-century house (informally known as Chawton Cottage) in which novelist ...

* Alexander Bestuzhev House *

Brontë Parsonage Museum The Brontë Parsonage Museum is a writer's house museum maintained by the Brontë Society in honour of the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne. The museum is in the former Brontë family home, the parsonage in Haworth, West Yorksh ...

* Green Hills Farm ( Pearl S. Buck) *

Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...

Museum:

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

* Robert Burns Cottage *

Newstead Abbey Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, England, was formerly an Augustinian priory. Converted to a domestic home following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it is now best known as the ancestral home of Lord Byron. The Abbey is on the national ...

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Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-kno ...

) *

Carlyle's House Carlyle's House, in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, central London, was the home of the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane from 1834 until his death. The home of these writers was purchased by public subscripti ...

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Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...

's house in London) *

Craigenputtock Craigenputtock (usually spelled by the Carlyles as Craigenputtoch) is a farmhouse in Scotland where Thomas Carlyle lived from 1828 to 1834. He wrote several of his early works there, including ''Sartor Resartus''. The estate's name incorporat ...

(Thomas Carlyle's estate in Scotland) *

Casa de Cervantes The Cervantes' House () is a museum in Valladolid, Spain, devoted to Miguel de Cervantes. The museum is located in the house that was Cervantes's home. It is one of the National Museums of Spain and it is attached to the Ministry of Culture. It ...

Melikhovo Melikhovo () is a writer's house museum in the former country estate of the Russian playwright and writer Anton Chekhov. Chekhov lived in the estate from March 1892 until August 1899, and it is where he wrote some of his most famous plays and stor ...

and

White Dacha The White Dacha (; ) is the house that Anton Chekhov had built in Yalta and in which he wrote some of his greatest work. It is now a writer's house museum. Building The White Dacha was built in 1898 following Chekhov's success with ''The Seagull ...

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Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

) *

Greenway Estate Greenway, also known as Greenway House, is an estate on the River Dart near Galmpton, Torbay, Galmpton in Devon, England. Once the home of the author Agatha Christie, it is now owned by the National Trust. The estate was served by the Dartmout ...

(

Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English people, English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving ...

) * John Clare Cottage * Manning Clark House * Jean Cocteau House * Coleridge Cottage (

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

) *

Firefly Estate The Firefly Estate, located east of Oracabessa, Jamaica, was the Caribbean home of Sir Noël Coward and is the site of his grave. It is now listed as a National Heritage Site by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust. Although the setting is idyllic, ...

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Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' called "a sense of personal style, a combination of c ...

) *

Cowper and Newton Museum The Cowper and Newton Museum is a museum in Olney, north Buckinghamshire, England, around north-east of Central Milton Keynes. Celebrating the work and lives of two famous local residents: William Cowper (1731–1800), a celebrated 18th-centu ...

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William Cowper William Cowper ( ; – 25 April 1800) was an English poet and Anglican hymnwriter. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the Engli ...

) *

Osamu Dazai Memorial Museum The , also commonly referred to as (), is a writer's home museum located in the Kanagi, Aomori, Kanagi area of Goshogawara, Aomori, Goshogawara in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. It is dedicated to the late author Osamu Dazai, who spent some of his ear ...

Charles Dickens Museum The Charles Dickens Museum is an author's house museum at 48 Doughty Street in King's Cross, London, King's Cross, in the London Borough of Camden. It occupies a typical Georgian architecture, Georgian terraced house which was Charles Dickens, ...

* Emily Dickinson Museum * Château de Monte-Cristo (

Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas (born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas , was a French novelist and playwright. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the mos ...

) *

Rowan Oak Rowan Oak was the home of author William Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi. It is a primitive Greek Revival house originally built in 1844 for Robert B Sheegog, an Irish immigrant enslaver from Tennessee. Faulkner purchased the house when it was i ...

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William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...

) *

Goldeneye ''GoldenEye'' is a 1995 spy film, the seventeenth in the List of James Bond films, ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 agent James Bond (lit ...

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Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer, best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his ...

) *

Anne Frank House The Anne Frank House () is a writer's house and biographical museum dedicated to Judaism, Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank. The building is located on a canal called the Prinsengracht, close to the Westerkerk, in Amsterdam-Centrum, central Amst ...

Elizabeth Gaskell's House 84 Plymouth Grove, now known as Elizabeth Gaskell's House, is a writer's house museum in Manchester, England. The Grade II* listed neoclassical villa was the residence of William and Elizabeth Gaskell from 1850 until their deaths in 1884 and ...

* Goethe's House and

Birthplace The place of birth (POB) or birthplace is the place where a person was born. This place is often used in legal documents, together with name and date of birth, to uniquely identify a person. Practice regarding whether this place should be a cou ...

* Edward Gorey House *

Thomas Hardy's Cottage Thomas Hardy's Cottage, in Stinsford, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, is a small cob and thatching, thatch building that is the birthplace of the English author Thomas Hardy. He was born there in 1840 and lived in the cottage until he was aged 34� ...

and

Max Gate Max Gate is the former home of Thomas Hardy and is located on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, England. It was designed and built by Thomas Hardy for his own use in 1885 and he lived there until his death in 1928. In 1940 it was bequeathed ...

Ernest Hemingway House The Ernest Hemingway House was the residence of American writer Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s. The house is situated on the island of Key West, Florida. It is at 907 Whitehead Street, across from the Key West Lighthouse, close to the southern ...

and

Cottage A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide ...

* James Herriot's home * Schillerhaus, Leipzig (

Ludwig Ferdinand Huber Ludwig Ferdinand Huber or Louis Ferdinand Huber (1764 – 24 December 1804) was a German translator, diplomat, playwright, literary critic, and journalist. Born in Paris, Huber was the son of the Bavarian-born writer and translator Michael Hub ...

) * Maison de Victor Hugo * Dr Samuel Johnson's House and

* John Keats House and Keats–Shelley House *

Bateman's Bateman's is a 17th-century house located in Burwash, East Sussex, England. It was the home of Rudyard Kipling from 1902 until his death in 1936. The house was built in 1634. Kipling's widow Caroline bequeathed the house to the National Trust ...

(

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...

) * Clouds Hill (

T. E. Lawrence Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British Army officer, archaeologist, diplomat and writer known for his role during the Arab Revolt and Sinai and Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the First W ...

) *

Tarkhany Tarkhany ( rus, Тарха́ны, p=tɐˈrxanɨ) is a Writer's house museum on the Russian estate where the Romantic writer Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) spent his childhood and was buried. The late 18th Century–early 19th Century estate is ...

(

Mikhail Lermontov Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov ( , ; rus, Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, , mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲerməntəf, links=yes; – ) was a Russian Romanticism, Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called ...

) * Lope de Vega's house *

Arrowhead An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, or sometimes for special purposes such as signaling. ...

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Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...

) * Milton's Cottage (

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and politic ...

) * Margaret Mitchell House and Museum * Rozhdestveno Estate (

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

) * La Sebastiana (

Pablo Neruda Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...

) *

Monte Cristo Cottage Monte Cristo Cottage (also known as Eugene O'Neill Summer House) was the summer home of American actor James O'Neill (actor, born 1847), James O'Neill and his family, notably his son Eugene O'Neill. It is a National Historic Landmark located a ...

(

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of Realism (theatre), realism, earlier associated with ...

) * Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum * Hill Top (

Beatrix Potter Helen Beatrix Heelis (; 28 July 186622 December 1943), usually known as Beatrix Potter ( ), was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as '' ...

) * Abbotsford (

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European literature, European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'' (18 ...

) *

Shakespeare's Birthplace Shakespeare's Birthplace is a restored 16th-century half-timbered house situated on Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, where it is believed that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and spent his childhood years.

* Shandy Hall (

Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric. He is best known for his comic novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' (1759–1767) and ''A Sentimental Journey Thro ...

) *

Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...

House ( Brunswick,

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio Ri ...

Hartford Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...

) * Farringford House (

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...

) *

Dylan Thomas Boathouse The Boathouse in Laugharne, Wales, was where Dylan Thomas lived with his family during his last four years between 1949 and 1953. The house is set in a cliff overlooking the Tâf estuary and is where he wrote many of his major pieces. It has been ...

James Thurber House Thurber House is a literary center for readers and writers located in Columbus, Ohio, in the historic former home of author, humorist, and The New Yorker, ''New Yorker'' cartoonist James Thurber. Thurber House is dedicated to promoting the lite ...

Yasnaya Polyana Yasnaya Polyana ( rus, Я́сная Поля́на, p=ˈjasnəjə pɐˈlʲanə, ) is a writer's house museum, the former home of the writer Leo Tolstoy.#Bartlett, Bartlett, p. 25 It is southwest of Tula, Russia, Tula, Russia, and from Moscow. ...

(

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...

) *

Mark Twain House The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, was the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) and his family from 1874 to 1891. The Clemens family had it designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in the American High Got ...

Strawberry Hill House Strawberry Hill House—often called simply Strawberry Hill—is a Gothic Revival architecture, Gothic Revival villa that was built in Twickenham, London, by Horace Walpole (1717–1797) from 1749 onward. It is a typical example of the "#Strawb ...

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Horace Walpole Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (; 24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English Whig politician, writer, historian and antiquarian. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, southwest London ...

) * The Mount (

Edith Wharton Edith Newbold Wharton (; ; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gil ...

) *

Highbury Highbury is an area of North London, England, in the London Borough of Islington. Highbury Manor Highbury was once owned by Ranulf, brother of Ilger, and included all the areas north and east of Canonbury and Holloway Roads. The manor hou ...

(

Patrick White Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian novelist and playwright who explored themes of religious experience, personal identity and the conflict between visionary individuals and a materialistic, co ...

) * Walt Whitman House *

Monk's House Monk's House is a 16th-century weatherboarded cottage in the village of Rodmell, three miles (4.8 km) south of Lewes, East Sussex, England. The writer Virginia Woolf and her husband, the political activist, journalist and editor Leonard W ...

(

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

) *

Dove Cottage Dove Cottage is a house on the edge of Grasmere in the Lake District of England. It is best known as the home of the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth from December 1799 to May 1808, where they spent over eight years of ...

and

Rydal Mount Rydal Mount is a house in the small village of Rydal, Cumbria, Rydal, near Ambleside in the English Lake District. It is best known as the home of the poet William Wordsworth from 1813 to his death in 1850. It is currently operated as a writer' ...

(

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

) * Yr Ysgwrn ( Hedd Wyn (Ellis Humphrey Evans)) *

Casa Stefan Zweig The Casa Stefan Zweig is legally regarded as a private charitable organisation, which was founded in 2006 by a group of interested private donors, to establish a writer's house museum, that is dedicated to the author, in the last residence of St ...

(

Stefan Zweig Stefan Zweig ( ; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Zweig was raised in V ...

) * Ernesto Sabato's House Museum * Villa Ocampo (

Victoria Ocampo Ramona Victoria Epifanía Rufina Ocampo (7 April 1890 – 27 January 1979) was an Argentine writer and intellectual. Best known as an advocate for others and as publisher of the literary magazine '' Sur'', she was also a writer and critic in he ...

) * Museo Gauchesco Ricardo Güiraldes * Maria Elena Walsh's House Museum * House of Ricardo Rojas * House Museum “El Paraíso” of Manuel Mujica Láinez * Museum Poeta Lugones * Horacio Quiroga's House Museum * Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's House Museum * Writers' House

Notable homes

See also

References

Further reading