Road Trip: Literary New England

Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson to Henry David Thoreau, Jack Kerouac and more

Replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond.

OK, I’ve been promising to start mixing in occasional pieces that focus on topics other than politics, so here goes. I presume that everyone who follows “The Riel World” enjoys both reading and traveling — and I’m personally a fan not only of international travel but also of exploring America through road trips — so let’s combine a few of these things and see how we might put together a themed, literary road trip.

Today, the focus is on New England, where there are numerous historic homes of legendary American authors all within a few hours of each other. If you’re interested, this link will take you to a Google map of the route outlined below.

The Hartford of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe

You can begin this road trip from any other town listed here, but I’m starting this particular journey in Hartford, Connecticut, about two hours northeast of New York City. Hartford today may be known as the “Insurance City,” but in the late 1800’s it was home to two of America’s most well known authors.

Mark Twain is still considered one of the nation’s most important writers, more than a century after his death. A humorist who wrote about social issues, whether it was the institution of slavery or the excesses of wealth and greed during the Gilded Age, Twain brought American literature to the people by writing in the vernacular of the time. Ernest Hemingway once suggested that all of "American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."

Twain spent his childhood on the banks of the Mississippi River in Hannibal, Missouri, but penned some of his most famous works while living in Connecticut, where he initially moved to be closer to his publisher. The Mark Twain House is a 25-room, 11,500-square-foot manor that was home to Twain and his family from 1874 to 1891. The third floor was Twain’s study, where he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and other works. In addition to house tours, there is a small, attached museum that offers a film on Twain by Ken Burns, plus two exhibition galleries.

Around the corner from Twain’s house is the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, in the home where she lived from 1873 to 1896. Stowe wrote numerous books but is most famous for the 1852 publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the anti-slavery novel that became an international bestseller. According to legend, upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked: "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

Stowe actually wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin while living in a different home in Brunswick, Maine that is today owned by Bowdoin College. There is also a Stowe House in Cincinnati, which was her home from the 1830s to early 1850s. In the Hartford home, visitors can take tours that focuses on Stowe's life, her writing, and the history of slavery and abolitionism.

Emily Dickinson's Amherst

The Homestead, Emily Dickinson’s home.

From Hartford, drive an hour north on I-91 to the college town of Amherst, Massachusetts. There, you can sample the educational vibe of a community with five colleges, along with the quiet life of one of the country’s greatest poets.

Emily Dickinson was a supremely talented but reclusive writer who rarely left home and whose work was virtually unknown before her death in 1886. Born to a prominent family, she never married and spent much of her life in the family home in Amherst.

Dickinson only published a handful of poems during her lifetime, and it wasn’t until after her death that her sister discovered forty handbound volumes of nearly 1,800 poems Dickinson had written. Yet today she’s considered “one of America’s greatest and most original poets.” So enduring is her popularity that Apple TV not long ago aired an innovative three-season series on Dickinson that explored the poet’s life from a contemporary perspective.

To learn more about Dickinson’s life and poetry, you can tour the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, which includes the Homestead home where she lived for much of her life as well as The Evergreens house next door that was occupied by her brother and sister-in-law.

The literati of Concord – Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, and Hawthorne

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s home.

Next up is Concord, Massachusetts, a scenic one-and-a-half hour trip from Amherst along Route 2. There, you’ll find one of the world’s most surprising literary hot spots. In fact, it’s sometimes difficult to believe that so many literary stars once walked the streets of this small, quintessentially New England town. All at the same time.

The city’s most famous author today is perhaps Henry David Thoreau, who is most renowned for his book Walden. The manuscript details Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond and explores his views on simplicity, self reliance, nature, and philosophy. There is a replica of Thoreau’s cabin that you can visit at Walden Pond, which is now a state park. Thoreau also wrote other books on nature as well as the essay Civil Disobedience, which later influenced figures from Gandhi to Martin Luther King.

Thoreau in turn was part of the Transcendentalist circle that gathered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. He even lived in Emerson’s house for a while, helping with chores and tutoring the children. While Thoreau may be more popularly known today, in the 19th century it was Emerson who was one of the country’s most famous writers and lecturers.

The author of such essays as Nature and Self-Reliance, Emerson and the Transcendentalists promoted individualism in the face of conformity and espoused the idea that all of creation was interconnected and that divinity could be found through nature. Today, you can tour the Emerson House, where he lived much of his adult life, or even follow the route of some local walks that were popular with Emerson, Thoreau, and others.

Concord was not just home to Emerson and Thoreau, however. Down the road from Emerson’s place is Orchard House, the home of the Alcott family. Bronson Alcott was a philosopher and educational reformer, but these days he may be most known as the father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, a story that is set at this location.

The home known as the Wayside, now part of Minuteman National Historical Park, was also once owned by the Alcott family — until they sold it to Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne also lived for a time in the Old Manse, a house that dates to 1770 and where Emerson previously resided while writing his essay Nature.

So yes, lots of literary history here. While you're in Concord, you might want to visit the Old North Bridge, where the first shots were fired in the American Revolutionary War. And you can’t leave town without making a pilgrimage to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and its famed Author’s Ridge. There, you’ll find the graves of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and the Alcotts, keeping each other company for eternity atop a picturesque hill.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Cambridge

At the Longfellow National Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a 20-minute jaunt from Concord, you can visit the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was considered the preeminent American poet of the mid-1800s. He was the country’s first poet celebrity and was even honored in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey in London. While he wasn’t innovative as, say, Walt Whitman, Longfellow became known for such work as “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “A Psalm of Life.”

This home, which is just a few blocks from the campus of Harvard University, was also the temporary headquarters of George Washington when he took command of the Continental Army during the Siege of Boston in 1775-76.

After touring the Longfellow House, you can also visit Harvard’s campus, have a bite to eat in eclectic Harvard Square, visit the Harvard Bookstore for some more reading options, or relax for a bit by the banks of the nearby Charles River.

Salem's “House of the Seven Gables”

The House of the Seven Gables.

From Cambridge, it’s about a 45-minute drive to the coastal town of Salem, Massachusetts, where mysteries await. You may have just seen where Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in Concord, but now you can tour The House of the Seven Gables, the building that inspired Hawthorne to write his 1851 novel of the same name. Built in 1668, this is the oldest surviving 17th century wooden mansion in New England and eventually came to be owned by Hawthorne’s second cousin.

After touring the house and its famous secret staircase, stroll over to the home where Hawthorne was born in 1804. This building was moved from a few blocks away so it could share the grounds of the Seven Gables mansion.

Before leaving Salem, you might also want to visit the Salem Witch Museum to explore the witchcraft panic that gripped the town in 1692. You could also visit the beaches and historic Old Town of neighboring Marblehead. Then it’s back "on the road." Literally.

Jack Kerouac’s Lowell

Jack Kerouac for many Americans came to personify the literary and cultural movement known as the Beat Generation, whose members rejected tradition, conformity, and materialism in favor of an ethos of freedom. The most famous Beat novel was Kerouac’s On the Road, published in 1957.

Kerouac himself is also closely identified with his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, a 45-minute drive northwest from Salem. Although Kerouac is the only author on this tour without an historic home to visit, there is a Jack Kerouac commemorative sculpture in Kerouac Park on Bridge Street, and the author is buried in the town’s Edson Cemetery. Perhaps the best way to learn about the writer who popularized the Beat Generation, though, is to take a walking tour of Kerouac’s Lowell, where you can learn about some of the places that influenced his life.

Robert Frost in New Hampshire and Vermont

We’re into the last stages of this literary journey and next we’ll head to southern New Hampshire and Vermont to pay tribute to the poet Robert Frost. The prototypical New England poet, Frost was famous for such works as The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. He was also the first poet invited to speak at a presidential inauguration, when he recited a poem at John Kennedy’s ceremony in 1961.

Derry, New Hampshire is not far from Massachusetts border, only a half-hour from Lowell. Frost had a 30-acre farm here from 1900 to 1911. He worked as a farmer and teacher, while in his spare time trying to hone his writing. At the Robert Frost Farm, visitors can tour the farm house, walk along a nature-poetry trail, or attend poetry readings.

If you want to commune more with Frost it’ll take a drive of another two-and-a-half hours, but it's a lovely trip through southern Vermont. At the Robert Frost Stone House Museum, run by Bennington College, you’ll see where Frost lived from 1920 to 1929 and composed some of his most famous poems. You can also visit Frost’s grave in the Old Bennington Cemetery.

Herman Melville and Edith Wharton in the Berkshires

Arrowhead, the Herman Melville home.

Finally, another drive of an hour to the south will take you into the heart of the picturesque Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Here, you can learn about the authors of Moby-Dick and The Age of Innocence.

Herman Melville wrote his most famous books during the 13 years he lived in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from 1850 to 1863. His masterwork was Moby-Dick, which even today is considered by some to be the greatest American novel. Arrowhead, the Herman Melville House, is available to tour. There is also a Melville Trail in Berkshire County.

One the other side of the literary spectrum from Melville’s work about whaling and a search for meaning, meanwhile, are Edith Wharton’s writings about the upper class society with which she was intimately familiar. This includes her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence, which won a Pulitzer Prize. You can visit and tour The Mount, her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, 15 minutes from Pittsfield, which she designed herself and lived in from 1902 to 1911.

From Wharton’s home, if you want to get back to the starting point in Hartford, it's about a one-and-a-half-hour trip. Or you can head off in any other direction you choose.

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Photo credits from Wikimedia Commons: Thoreau cabin, Emily Dickinson home, Ralph Waldo Emerson home, House of the Seven Gables, and Herman Melville home.