Monday, March 6, 2023

Writers' Spaces

The winner of Priscilla Paton's WHEN THE HOUSE BURNS is Sandra Benson. Sandra, contact juliaspencerfleming@gmail.com for more info! 

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'll have much more to say (and photos to share!) about my fabulous trip to Key West and spending time with Lucy and Hallie later in the week, but today I want to share some thoughts on visiting Ernest Hemingway's Key West studio for the second time. The Hemingway House is fascinating for its history and memorabilia, and of course the famous cats, but it's the separate studio in the back that I connected with so deeply that I couldn't wait to see it again. 



Years ago I visited Jane Austen's home in Chawton, Hampshire, and I marveled at the small parlor where she wrote, seldom alone, surrounded by the busy comings and goings of the household. If there was some magic in that room, I felt it doubly in Hemingway's studio. Here I am, taking a selfie in the mirror in the room's entrance, maybe hoping a little of that fairy dust would rub off on me. I imagined papers piled beside the typewriter, books piled on the floor, the keyboard clacking with work in progress. 



On leaving, I was compelled to order a copy of Hemingway's Letters, Vol. 2 of 6, the Paris years. It was waiting for me when I got home, and I immediately came across this quote. Hemingway, writing to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1925, says, "It certainly is funny how your head…can go most of the time like a frozen cabbage and then it can give you hell when it starts going. Have been so pleased to find it still functions." He was writing The Sun Also Rises, the novel that propelled him to fame. There's something comforting about knowing that such a renowned writer had the same struggle with stopping and starting, and that something amazing came from it. 


And to top it off, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS was playing on my flight home.


Dear Reds, have you been inspired by a space where another writer lived or worked? 


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes. Yes yes yes. The Mount, in Lenox MA, where Edith Wharton lived and wrote. It is from a completely different time, socially and culturally,and the atmosphere and aura were unchanged when we visited, .and the gardens were  transporting. It’s so–elegant, and contained, and everything was precisely where it was supposed to be, and filled with history and almost-stressful precision and manners.  And she is my absolute idol as a writer. Unmatched! One of the things I hope to adopt for myself is that Wharton apparently wrote in bed, and then dropped her handwritten pages on the floor for the secretary to pick up and transcribe. Wonder if I could somehow make that happen?   

I WISH I had taken a photo of myself in her mirror. Brilliant idea. I will do it this summer.



RHYS BOWEN: The writing space that I crave is Agatha Christie’s Greenway. It is my ultimate fantasy house, an elegant Georgian on the banks of the River Dart in a wonderful setting. Agatha had a desk with that view and also all those grounds to wander in while she talked her way through plot points.  I might choose to write in the boat house if I lived there so I had peace and quiet. But would I work well with some much to look at out of the windows?  And Hank, I too would like a secretary to take my scribbles and type them up. Luckily I dont write by hand as John can’t read my handwriting!


LUCY BURDETTE: Debs, you know how much I love that little Hemingway office and in fact, the entire house and grounds on Whitehead Street in Key West. The office is separate enough from the house that I bet I could get a lot done there. (Well, I’d have to turn off the Internet too…)


Hank, I already do most of my writing in bed, though it’s all in the computer. I wouldn’t dream of dropping pages on the floor. My sweet John would not even notice them and the animals would rip them to shreds. I also visited EW’s home a few years back–it’s gorgeous!


JENN McKINLAY: Oh, such a good question! I have visited the Hemingway house in Key West (back when I was in high school - before I knew I wanted to be a writer). At the time, I viewed it from my 17 year-old “Dude was a total misogynist but at least he loved cats” perspective. Hub and I have deep debates about Hemingway and his regard of women and Hub has worn me down into reconsidering my stance. I don’t believe he was a misogynist so much as a product of his time. Anyway, I also adore Edith Wharton and thanks to Hank am now planning to visit her estate. I’ve never seen it - what an oversight!


As for other authors’ spaces, I have to say on my bucket list to visit are P.E.I. - Lucy Maude Montgomery’s stomping grounds and I want to visit Christie’s Greenway as well. I did the Austen Centre in Bath but would love to visit Chawton. Growing up in CT, the author’s home I remember most clearly is Mark Twain’s house in Hartford via many school field trips. Not sure why I don’t live in such a glorious abode (it has a turret, billiard room, and conservatory!) but here we are. 


HALLIE EPHRON: I haven’t been to many famous authors’ abodes, but the Hemingway House was certainly memorable. Love the cats. And his office. And the surrounding brick walls that keep it separate from the boisterous rest of Key West, making the property feel like its own Secret Garden. And when we visited Prince Edward Island I felt as if I were channeling Lucy Maude Montgomery and catching a glimpse of Anne of Green Gables around every corner. 


JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I had already started my writing career when we made a weekend trip to Lexington and Concord. Ross was definitely there for the Revolutionary history, but I was dazzled by the wonderfully restored homes of the Transcendentalists, America’s forerunner of the Bloomsbury Group.


The Alcott Family’s homes, The Old Manse, the Thoreau-Alcott House, and Louisa May Alcott’s own Orchard House, feel as if philosophy and art and writing and political activism are seeped into the very walls. (They’re also, for those of us in old New England houses, excellent guides to the sort of wall treatments, paint colors and decor were authentic to that time.) You can also see Emerson’s house and spaces where Hawthorne worked. I left feeling almost dizzy with the concentration of world- and literature- changing talent that had sat inside those houses and strode the tree-lined paths between them.


DEBS: Of all the places mentioned, Greenway is the one I'd most like to visit. I'm envious, Rhys!


READERS, have you visited famous authors' homes? And did any magic linger?


89 comments:

  1. Oh, my . . . never having had the opportunity to visit a famous author's home, this just sounds absolutely magical. Something to add to my bucket list . . . .

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    1. Hank Phillippi RyanMarch 6, 2023 at 1:13 AM

      Where would you go, if you could go anywhere? Xxx

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    2. Agatha Christie's home in England . . . .

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  2. This last September, I was in a couple of the places already mentioned. I visited Prince Edward Island, although the wrong side of the island for the Anne stuff. It was beautiful. A few days later, I was in the Lexington and Concord areas, and stopped outside the Alcott/Hawthorne houses. My friend and I were running short on time, so we didn't have time to go in unfortunately. Need to get back there and spend more time in the area.

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    1. Mark, you were in MA? I had no idea! You should have called. ;^)

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  3. I haven't visited any authors homes, but I did visit the House of Seven Gables.

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  4. I was able to visit the Bronte home in Hawarth about 25 years ago. I had been captivated by the Brontes every since I was a teenager, so that was a marvelous experience. And it really was a house steeped in atmosphere. As for other author homes I'd like to visit: Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, John Steinbeck.

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    1. When I was 15, my family and I hiked from Haworth to Top Withens, which was supposed to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. On a later visit, I got to see the Bronte Parsonage Museum. I too was captivated by the Brontes!

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  5. Our SINCNE chapter did a field trip to Twain's home, which was fabulous, and I've toured Alcott's Orchard House - so magical to see her little desk. Next time I visit my son in western MA I want to tour Emily Dickinson's home (Amanda Flower's recent I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH is a lovely rendition of Dickinson as amateur sleuth).

    Right down the street here is John Greenleaf Whittier's home, where I trained as a docent. His desk, his hat, his glasses are right there in his study, and the special writing chair he had made is in the parlor. I can give anyone a tour - I have the door code!

    Having read Lori Rader-Day's mystery set in Greenway, I very much would like to visit there, plus the Hemmingway house and Edith Wharton's estate.

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  6. I know that during a student summer spent in London, I visited Charles Dickens's home and found it exciting, but I confess that I've forgotten the details. What comes back to me much more clearly is the house Louisa Mae Alcott lived in as a child with her sisters, which Julia also talks about. I saw the home of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy with my sister and mother when I was about twelve, and it made a huge impression on me. Thanks for asking, Debs! I haven't thought about that experience for quite a while!

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    1. I'm sorry to say I've never visited the Dickens Museum. Next trip to London!

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  7. Interesting. I never think about visiting authors' homes when I travel. I could have visited at least a half dozen mentioned here.
    The Mark Twain House is just 3 miles from mine and I have been inside a few times. There is a museum next to it now that hosts authors and other types of programs.

    Jenn really hit on a very important topic concerning how we, with our 21st Century glasses, should regard people who lived in different times with totally different sensibilities. Over the years, I have developed a strong distain for Hemingway, his manner and his actions. In my mind, he has become a bit of a charicature of himself. If we truly regard people who lived in the past, in the light of their times, would we be kinder?

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    1. Judy, have you read any of Paula McLain's books about Hemingway? The Paris Wife is about his first marriage, and Love and Ruin follows his third wife, the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Fiction, but she did a lot of research.

      And I agree, disdain. This might sound like heresy, but I never really got what the big deal was about his writing. If you removed all references to alcohol in his books you'd end with short stories.

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    2. Judy, such an interesting topic. I never cared much for Hemingway until I read A Movable Feast. Now I'm reading his letters and am fascinated. Such a different picture of him.

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    3. Karen, I haven't read either of those books but will keep them in mind. Debs, neither have I read A Movable Feast. I might try to fit that in this spring.

      Jim Benn has Hemingway appear in a couple of the Billy Boyle WWII Mysteries and the portrait is most unflattering, and in some cases buffoonish.

      My son had to read Hemingway for a class. He gave such a hilarious synopsis of his writing at the seder table one year that we all fell apart laughing. "I'm bored, I'm drunk, let's go to Paris. I'm bored, I'm drunk, let's go to Spain!" I still laugh when I think about it, it certainly gave Jonathan some points in my very well-read family!

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  8. One more thing-- the Studios of Key West sponsored a tour of artist studios in town on Saturday. Believe me, there were some absolutely magical places with little secret gardens. Very inspiring!

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    1. I can't believe I JUST missed it! I'd love to have seen those gardens!

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    2. Do they tour your garden, Roberta? It would be the first one on my list!!

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  9. Faulkner's house in Oxford, MS, was interesting. He pinned pages of his manuscript to the walls of his study, which was in a small addition off the kitchen. Eudora Welty's family home in Jackson, MS, was inspiring. She wrote in the big bedroom overlooking the quiet residential street. She gardened. She framed fan mail from E.M. Forster. I visited the Bronte home in Yorkshire and the Jane Austen sites in Bath. Still on my list is Greenway, Hemmingway's house, and Flannery O'Connor's farm in Georgia. With peacocks.

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  10. Edith, I would love that tour! Maybe a side trip to our NYC trip with Kathy Reel?

    I've also been to Mark Twain's glorious home in Hartford, back in 1981. The top of the house billiard/smoking/writing room is so wonderful.

    I've been to two other writer's homes, both kind of out there. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who wrote The Yearling, lived in north central Florida, in a community called Cross Creek. Her home is open for tours, and is a traditional "cracker" style house, an architectural style unique to northern Florida and southern Georgia.

    On our first visit to Kenya our daughter, who had to work the first day we were there, arranged for a driver/guide to take us to the National Park (on the outskirts of Nairobi, 45 sq miles of wild animals), and then to Karen to visit Karen Blixen's home. This is the house used for Out of Africa, at least for the exterior shots. Her writing room, library, and typewriter are all still there, along with walls of her books. We started rewatching OOA last night, and got a kick out of seeing familiar sights.

    By the way, she is so revered in Kenya that this entire area of Nairobi is named for her. However, there is also a colonial-era luxury hotel and restaurant in Karen called Hemingway's.

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    1. Wow. How fascinating, Karen. OOA is a favourite of mine...

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    2. Karen, I envy your visit of Karen Blixen’s place. Love OOA. Danielle

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    3. Loved Out of Africa. What a treat for you.

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    4. Karen, I'm swooning. I would absolutely love to visit Karen Blixen's home.

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    5. Oh, I think visiting Karern Blixen's home would be one of those great moments in life where you just stand still and soak in the ambiance. And, Karen, I'm in for the full Monty on a NYC and beyond trip.

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  11. I'm pretty sure my mum dragged me to Haworth but I was much too young to appreciate the Bronte history I was seeing...

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  12. I have visited the Anne of Green Gables museum in PEI in the 1980s. This was the farmhouse where Lucy Maud Montgomery spent her childhood summers, not where she wrote her novels.

    And I remember visiting the Poe House & Museum in Baltimore in 2008 after attending Bouchercon.

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    1. Grace, my hub and I just visited the Poe Museum in Richmond. Now we're ready to go to the house/museum in Baltimore and the one in Philadelphia.

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    2. I have a niece who got married in the grounds of the Poe House and Museum in Richmond a number of years ago. -Melanie

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  13. I visited Jane Austen Center in Bath.
    Many years ago I went to a Tea Party on the grounds of Louise Penny’s home for the benefit of a No Kill Animal Shelter. Didn’t go into the house but the grounds alone had plenty to inspire.
    While in Australia, I travelled to Norfolk Island where I visited Colleen McCullough’s house. It has a very simple exterior but contains many beautiful things. What impressed me the most is her huge research library. Later in the week, I saw her grave in the island’s cemetery.
    Danielle

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    1. I didn't think about living authors' homes. For what it's worth, I have been to both Hank and Hallie's houses and seen their writing rooms!

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    2. What an amazing trip that must have been, Danielle, to Norfolk Island!!

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    3. And I have seen Lucy's Florida space and Rhys's Arizona space!

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  14. Visited the Hemingway house and love the studio. Creativity seems to float in the air! I never thought to visit the Twain house. He's one of my favorite authors. Bucket list!!!

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  15. One of my hobbies was visiting historic homes. I have visited many of the places mentioned above, including the Hemingway House in Key West. I was quite troubled with this location, given how unhappy both Hemingway and his then wife were while in residence. Places not mentioned include Jack London's estate near Santa Rosa. It burned long ago, but the grounds are still interesting. In Key West, the library was important because I knew that Tennessee Williams wrote there. Seeing both Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Florida home, and her typewriter, also brought up the unsung story of the real author of the Cross Creek cookbook. It is fairly well known now that Rawlings, like many from her era just co-oped the recipes from her cook and housekeeper Idella.

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    1. Was that the current Key West Library, Coralee? I just spoke there but didn't know about the Tennessee Williams connection.

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    2. Williams lived in Key West from 1941 - 1984. The historical society is the place to find his data. They held an exhibit in 2011 celebrating the 100th anniversary of his death. Like Hemingway, Capote and Williams they all loved the freedom of Key West along with the availability for free flowing alcohol.

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  16. I have been to Green Gables, Cavendish, PEI the setting for the Anne stories, though not where LMM wrote them. Lots of young girls wearing straw hats with red pigtails attached as they got off the tour buses.

    This fall hub and I did a trip around Delaware and Virginia. We went to the Poe Museum in Richmond, VA - a lovely brick house. One he visited, but did not live in. It has a walled garden and a shrine to Poe (littered with offerings from visitors). Also two resident black cats. Many of his belongings are there, and the story of his life. The display ends with his mysterious death. Missing for days, delirious for another several, wearing someone else's clothes, and supposedly calling out the name Reynolds. His life and mysterious death, with possible solution, are very well written in 'A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe' by Mark Dawidziak.

    I should go to Mark Twain's house in Elmira, NY. Missed it when I lived nearby.
    Yes, there is magic in the places writers walked and breathed.

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    1. I'd love to go to PEI, it's long been on my bucket list.

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    2. PEI is magical! I was there in the 90’s and it felt like time slowed and moved backwards. Saw Green Gables found a fantastic used bookstore,walked the beaches… it was before the bridge was built.

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  17. This is great! I'd love to visit Greenway some day. Last summer, I took my history-obsessed middle kid to Salem, MA and we visited the House of the Seven Gables. It's not where Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the novel (I think he wrote it in Lenox, MA), but it was the inspiration for it and there was a lot of great Hawthorne history and atmosphere there, including a hidden, secret staircase. The house where Rudyard Kipling was living when he wrote The Jungle Book is actually here in Vermont. It's not open to the public but you can rent it out for a night. When I was a senior in college, I interviewed for a job as John Irving's assistant (I didn't get it) and got to see his studio, which was amazing, complete with a stuffed armadillo and a huge bookcase filled with foreign editions of his books. Thanks for all this great travel inspiration -- I have some studios to see now!

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    1. Sarah, I can't imagine why Irving didn't hire you. But don't you wonder if your life would have been different if he had?

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    2. Having volunteered with Cubs when I was younger, I would like that : renting Rudyard Kipling’s house for one night. Danielle

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    3. Debs -- I think it was probably a good thing. If I'd gotten that job, I wouldn't have moved to Ireland . . .

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  18. I've been to Orchard House, the March's home in Little Women, a couple of time. And oh, yes, the magic does linger, because Alcott put real scenes into the book. A very special place for anyone who ever loved Little Women, I would think. I've been to the Twains house in CT too, and it is just fascinating, a portrait of that unusual, gifted man at that moment -in some ways, the happiest of his life. But I've never been to the Poe Cottage, which is here in NY where I live!

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  19. Sadly I have never visited any author's home. There is an author though who lives just a few miles away. Her first book is out now, No Comfort for the Undertaker. I don't know her but maybe I could call and ask if I could visit. (For anyone who thinks I am serious, I am not.) I imagine it would be very inspiring to see the places where my favorite authors write.

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  20. Never been to a famous writer's house. But I know no one would pick up my pages from the floor as I dropped them if I wrote in bed!

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    1. Ha! The dogs would just trample mine!

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    2. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Koda would just lie down on them. ;-)

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  21. I lived across the road from the longtime home of E.B. White and his equally talented wife Katharine. They both had died by the time I moved to Brooklin, but I was in awe of their beautiful saltwater farm. The lovely couple that bought the property from the White estate invited us to walk/snowshoe/ski on the property in the wintertime, on the theory human scent would keep hungry deer from decimating the orchard. So in the cold weather months we had the run of the place, and I loved to peer through the window of the converted fish house on the shore of Allen Cove where E.B. White sometimes wrote.

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  22. I live five miles from Connemara, Carl Sandburg's house, in Flat Rock, NC. I was a volunteer guide there and loved meeting other writers who couldn't believe how simple the place looks even though it looks very grand from the outside. It's in a beautiful setting, complete with goats like the ones his wife Paula kept. His writing room is plain as are the other rooms. Often he would write on the large flat rock behind the house which is still there but now covered with playing children. There is a trail behind the house that leads to the top of the mountain where he would write. It's pretty steep -- I haven't made it to the top yet!

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  23. I've strolled past Emily Dickinson's home/museum in Amherst, MA, but didn't have the opportunity to visit. Not exactly the same, but someone who did do a bit of writing--I toured the Harry S. Truman home in Independence, MO, and was interested to see the tiny room that was his office/study/writing room. I would love to visit Hemingway's home in Key West someday.

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  24. I have been to two different Laura Ingalls Wilder sites, Burr Oak, Iowa and Mansfield, MIssouri. Mansfield is where she did her writing and there are two homes and a museum there. Pa’s fiddle is on display. I haven’t been to Twain’s home but I have been to Hannibal, Mo. a few times. And I scoped out the Mary Kay Andrews’ rental properties from the outside on Tybee Island last year.
    Have you considered that readers might like to visit your own homes now or after you are long gone?

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    1. Brenda, I had not. That's sort of a weird thought.

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    2. Brenda, I went to the Laura Ingall's Wilder house in Mansfield, Missouri, when I was a kid but I'm afraid I don't remember too much about it. Although I grew up in Missouri I never made it from the southwest part up to the northeast to visit Hannibal. Maybe a bucket list item for me. I’d like to see Twain’s house in Connecticut, for sure.

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  25. I should have mentioned that I knew where PD James lived in London, a dark green house on Holland Park Avenue (not far from Duncan and Gemma's fictional home,) and whenever I was in London I'd walk past and imagine her writing. Since she died I'm sure it's been sold. When I was there last October it had been painted a different color, which made me a bit sad.

    Also, for many years Dorothy Sayers lived just behind Holborn Police Station, off Lamb's Conduit Street, so I've had lots of opportunity to imagine her living in the neighborhood.

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    1. I forgot to add that I walked past Stephen King's second home in Maine when I was on a writers' retreat with a friend who owns a house in the same lakeside neighborhood. I wafted the air in front of his house into my face, hoping to absorb some of the talent. My friend says she's met him and he's been super generous to the local (tiny) library.

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    2. I think that's pretty cool, Edith! I worked briefly with a woman who was in high school with King's wife. My friend said she had met him at one of their class reunions and that he seemed like a great guy, "normal" in every way.

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  26. I have visited the Hemingway House in Key West and it is such an amazing home. I love that it's elegant but casual. It's charming at every turn - every room. Did he also have a home in Cuba? I've wondered about that too.
    I would love to see Agatha Christie's home in England. We did catch Beatrix Potter's house, Hill Top in Cumbria. It's like she still lives there and might at any moment be found in her garden with Peter Rabbit hopping around.

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    1. Oh, I'd love to see Beatrix Potter Hill Top! I saw the wonderful Potter exhibition at the V&A when I was in London in October, and brought home the huge and gorgeous exhibition book--which I haven't found time to read!

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    2. I’d like to go there too and Agatha Christie’s Greenway House.

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    3. I got to travel in England, a lifetime ago, with a friend who was a fearless driver and bookish. So we wandered all over including Hill Top Farm (not so easy to get to!) Lots of little vignettes there that made their way into her wonderful illustrations. Magical

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  27. I’d love to hear where all the Jungle Reds do their work. My own writing spot is a living room couch in a 1-bedroom basement apartment I share with my husband. The idea of a dedicated separate space sounds idyllic indeed!

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    1. Anon, your wish is our command! Here's where we show and tell about our own work spaces:
      https://www.jungleredwriters.com/2018/05/ill-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours.html

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  28. A few years ago, friends of mine invited me out to their home in Cross Plains, Texas. It’s a small town set in vast rolling grassland, home to lots of cattle, some pretty good Tex-Mex food, and the annual Barbarian Days festival to celebrate fantasy author Robert E. Howard. He wrote Conan the Barbarian, and moved to Cross Plains when his father, a physician, set up practice there. The Howard house is now a modest museum, and you can see the room where he wrote. It’s a long, narrow room—originally a sleeping porch—with a twin-sized cot at one end and a tiny school desk at the other. A window looks into it from his mother’s bedroom, so he can’t have had much privacy. I had to admire the strength of his imagination because there isn’t a dang thing I could see in the house, the landscape, or the whole town of Cross Plains to inspire the wild adventures Howard took his readers on.

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    1. Gig, maybe Howard was creating those stunning Hyborian realms to escape, at least on paper, from Cross Plains, Texas...

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    2. Mom was born in Cross Plains. You're right. There's not a darn thing there. People made up their own entertainments.

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    3. Julia and Pat, I think you are spot on.

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  29. What really stays in my mind is my Anne of Green Gables/ Lucy Maude Montgomery visit when I visited Prince Edward Island a long time ago. Just walking around the grounds I felt like I was in the presence of Montgomery’s fictional characters.

    Although I’ve lived in Connecticut my entire life, I’ve never visited Twain’s house, and I’ve always wanted to do that.

    DebRo

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  30. Beatrix Potter's Hill Top farm has a magical garden. Set in the beautiful English Lake District.

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  31. My favorite thing is to visit the homes of artists and writers, and I've hit quite a few. Who has seen Thomas Cole's home and studio (near Catskill, NY)? And Frederick Church's Olana across the river? I was thrilled to visit what was the home of historian John Bigelow (Malden, NY), now a private home. I have lots more on my bucket list, although some are a stretch: the garden house where he composed the beginning of his autobiography in Twyford (Hampshire, Eng.), and the house he rented in London on Craven St. near the Strand.

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  32. *That was Benjamin Franklin's autobiography.

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  33. Ooh, I forgot another: when I was going to school in London in the early eighties, our theatre professor was friends with the family that owned what had been J.M. Barrie's home in Kensington! Our little group got a private tour - it was magical. Also, I was SO envious. That was definitely a place I would have loved to live in. Alas, I just looked it up, and it last sold in 2019 for $10.5 million. A bit out of my price range.

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  34. I forgot that I visited the Orchard house in Grantchester, where Rupert Brooke stayed while writing most of his poetry. That was courtesy of Baroness Archer, Jeffrey Archer's wife. Orchard house was up for auction in 2018 with an asking pricing over over 10 million pounds.

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  35. Whew! Brain fog today. We visited Hemingway's home in Key West. Lovely. Skipped "his" bar though. We used to drive past the J. Frank Dobie home in Austin, a really interesting looking house. On the UT campus Erle Stanley Gardner's study had been recreated with all his things and papers that were donated by his family.

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    1. Oh my gosh, Pat, I stayed in the Dobie house when I was a teenager! My uncle, Texas writer A.C. Greene, was writer in residence there one year and I visited and hung out with my cousins. I should also have added having grown up familiar with my uncle's offices in their various houses.

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  36. Back when my daughter and her husband (then fiance) lived in Key West for a year, I would always go to the Hemingway House when I visited, and I made sure to visit quite a few times. Hallie, I like the way you describe the place as a Secret Garden. It is a paradise within paradise. Looking in at Hemingway's writing space behind his house at his furnishings and where he actually wrote was like time standing still, or rather like a former time standing still. When in 2013 (or maybe 2014), my friend from childhood, who lives in Virginia Beach, and I took a trip to Key West, driving from her home, we met some of our other former high school friends there. They had taken a cruise which was docking in Key West for a day. My friend and I didn't want to do the cruise part. So, I was excited to take them all to the Hemingway House, and I guess I expected them to have the same level of enthusiasm I had for it, but it wasn't to be. People who aren't book people are strange. Hahaha!

    Oh, the other place in Key West I visited, but only once, was the cottage where Robert Frost spent his winters from 1941 to 1960. It's on Caroline St., behind the Heritage House Museum. You could tour the house but not his cottage. Now, you can't tour either because it's reverted to a private residence due to lack of funds to sustain the museum. What I wonder is who got the furniture (that Frost actually used) and his papers from the cottage?

    My author place that I want most to visit is Agatha Christie's Greenway. I am trying to plan a trip to England, and I even have a fund set aside for it, but the trip I want to take will include lots of author sites and a side-trip to my family's small village link of Stoke-on-Canon in Devon, right outside of Exeter. Of course, London will take up at least a week, too. I really need a travel companion who is in tune with all that, as I'm not sure my husband would be.

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    1. London in a week is just enough to give you a taste, Kathy, but I know you want to get in as many places in England as possible.

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  38. I'm with Julia regarding Lexington and Concord. Simply amazing! My favorites were the drawings on the wall in the Alcott house (I mistyped previously and wrote March house because that is what it seemed like) and the Aeolian harp on the windowsill in the Emerson house. That latter captures, for me, the Transcendentalist idea of nature at work.

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  39. Oh, Julia, I am so jealous - I would love to see the Barrie house.

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  40. Sorry I am a day late. I was trying to recall if I ever visited the home of a writer? Yes! I visited Stratford upon Avon twice and visited the house where Shakespeare lived.

    And this is a case of six degree separation thing..maybe...

    The author of the Tarzan novel - Burroughs ? lived at Normandie Village in Los Angeles years before my grandparents bought NV and turned it into a hotel. Sad to say that like so many relics in America, NV was sold after my grandmother died and torn down / razed. NV was sold because when my grandmother became sick, the medical bills were tremendous and my grandfather had medical bills!

    Diana

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  41. We toured Hemingway's home in 2019-so fascinating, and love all the many cats!

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  42. We have toured Alcotts', Longfellow's, & Mark Twain's homes, also.

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