Connecticut

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Harriet Beecher Stowe is the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which helped solidify opposition to slavery before the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln called her "the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Harriet Beecher was born in Connecticut to a Congregationalist minister. In 1832 her father moved the family to Ohio. There, Harriet met and married Calvin E. Stowe. In 1850 Calvin Stowe moved the family to Brunswick, Maine. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written largely in Brunswick. In 1873, the Stowes moved to their last home, the brick Victorian house on Forest Street in Hartford.

Massachusetts

From John Winthrop's 1630 sermon exhorting fellow Puritans to create a "City on a Hill" to Lowell native Jack Kerouac leading the 1950s Beat Generation, Massachusetts is a cradle of original thinking and expressive writing. One hub of Massachusetts-based literature is the Boston-Cambridge-Concord circuit in the four to five decades bracketing 1850. The renaissance was driven by essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, novelist Herman Melville, the Alcott family, the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others. In the midst of this deep thinking, let's not forget that Massachusetts was home to the equally important, if more colorful Theodor Suess Geisel -- that is, Dr. Seuss. Many of the homes and workplaces of these authors still exist and are open to the public.

Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991)

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield in 1904 and grew up in the city's Forest Park neighborhood. Images of Springfield can be found throughout Dr. Seuss's work. His first children's book, "And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street," shows a man resembling the city's mayor and police officers riding red motorcycles, typical of the Indian brand motorcycles for which the city became famous. Geisel attendede Dartmouth College, where he began using his pen name, Dr. Seuss. Later, Geisel began working as a cartoonist and his work was published in The Saturday Evening Post. With the publication of "The Cat in the Hat," Geisel became an established children's book author. More than 200 million copies of his books have been sold.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Readers of American literature are familiar with the credo of "Walden": "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Essayist, poet, and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau became one of the central figures in the Transcendentalist group of writers and thinkers of the mid-1800s. He is best know for "Walden."In 1845 Thoreau lived on the shores of Walden Point and described his observations in "A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (1849)."

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Born in Salem, Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he met Calvin Stowe, husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and became lifelong friends with Franklin Pierce, the future president, and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His writing successes acquired a strong foothold with the publication in 1837 of "Twice-Told Tales," followed by "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), and "The House of the Seven Gables" (1851). The seven-gabled house in Salem that inspired the story is open to the public. The Nathaniel Hawthorne House, where the writer was born, also is open to the public.

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

A child of the gifted and nonconformist Alcott family, Louisa May Alcott is best known for her novel "Little Women (1868)." She was the daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, an experimental educator, and Abigail May Alcott, a social worker. Her sisters, Anna, Louisa May, Elizabeth, and May, were the models for Alcott's famous novel for girls. She undertook a considerable amount of serious work for adults, including poetry, stories, and nonfiction reporting, abolitionist treatises, and sensationalistic thrillers. The Alcott family's most permanent home was Orchard House in Concord. This house, virtually unchanged, is open to the public.

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Herman Melville enjoyed a privileged childhood in New York City. At age 22, he signed on the whaler Acushnet for a whaling voyage. Later he joined the U.S. Navy. The young man began to write down the stories of his seafaring adventures, which led to the publication of "Typee (1846)" and other adventure stories. In 1850, he was introduced to Oliver Wendell Holmes and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville and Hawthorne became instant friends. Melville moved to the Berkshires, bought a farm, and named his house Arrowhead. There he wrote some of his finest works, among them his masterpiece, "Moby-Dick." During 13 years of work at Arrowhead, he failed to earn sufficient income from his writing, so he moved to New York City and began work as a customs inspector. His last work was "Billy Bud," published decades after his death.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Sometimes called the Sage of Concord and the éminence grise of the mid-19th century American Renaissance, Emerson was a preacher, philosopher, and poet. He wrote and preached on the harmonic connection between people and nature. He was an abolitionist, a crusader for justice, and utopian, and a loyal supporter of other artists and crusaders of the time. The Emerson House in Concord is now a museum.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1837-1882)

Possibly the most popular American poet of the 19th century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his works are still studied and copied. His most famous pieces include "Evangeline (1847)," and "The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)." He was born in 1807 in Portland, Maine. After university, Longfellow returned to Maine to work at Bowdoin College, where he met Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow's later poetry reflects his interest in establishing an American mythology. His image in marble is located in Westminster Abbey, London, in the Poet's Corner.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst to a highly educated and politically dynamic family. She began writing poems at about the age of 20, first in a conventional style and later in more experimental ways. She was exceedingly private, spending most of her time after the age of 23 alone in her bedroom. Of the 1,800 poems she wrote, only seven were published while she lived. Her work is believed to have heavily influenced modern poetry. She is considered among the most innovative of American poets.

Eric Carle

Eric Carle is acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated picture books for very young children. His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has eaten its way into the hearts of literally millions of children all over the world and has been translated into more than 45 languages and sold over 30 million copies. Since the Caterpillar was published in 1969, Eric Carle has illustrated more than 70 books. More than 90 million copies of his books have sold around the world

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

Edith Wharton was born into privileged society in New York City, but she cast off the strictures of a limited life bound for marriage and society. She wrote 40 books in 40 years, including "The Age of Innocence," "Ethan Frome," and "The House of Mirth." She wrote authoritatively on many subjects, including architecture, gardens, interior design, and travel. She was the first woman to received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Old Corner Bookstore
School and Washington Streets
Boston, MA

Typical of the buildings of Boston in Colonial days, the Old Corner Bookstore was built as an apothecary for druggist Thomas Creese in 1718, and it became a literary center in the mid-19th century. The work of writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others were published by Ticknor and Fields Co., whose offices was located here.

Maine

Celia Thaxter (1835-1894)

Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Celia Laighton Thaxter grew up in the Isles of Shoals, including Appledore and Star islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean offshore between Rye, New Hampshire, and Kittery Point, Maine. Her father, Thomas Laighton, was a lighthouse keeper on several of the islands. After her marriage and a move to Massachusetts, she moved back to Appledore Island in Maine and became the hostess of her father's hotel, the Appledore House, and welcomed many New England literary and artistic notables to the island. Her garden on Appledore was famous. Her poems first appeared in "The Atlantic Monthly" and she became one of America's favorite authors in the late 19th century.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Harriet Beecher Stowe is the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which helped solidify opposition to slavery before the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln called her "the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Harriet Beecher was born in Connecticut to a Congregationalist minister. In 1832 her father moved the family to Ohio. There, Harriet met and married Calvin E. Stowe. In 1850 Calvin Stowe moved the family to Brunswick, Maine. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written largely in Brunswick. In 1873, the Stowes moved to their last home, the brick Victorian house on Forest Street in Hartford.

New Hampshire

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Robert Frost, whose writings are often considered to capture the heart and soul of New England, was born in 1874 in San Francisco. When he was 11 his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1900, Frost's grandfather bought a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, for Robert's use. For Frost, the farm was an ideal setting to raise his family and write poetry in private. The Frost family moved to England in 1912. There, Frost was influenced by several British poets. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two collections and his reputation was established. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, eventually winning four Pulitzer Prizes.

Celia Thaxter (1835-1894)

Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Celia Laighton Thaxter grew up in the Isles of Shoals, including Appledore and Star islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean offshore between Rye, New Hampshire, and Kittery Point, Maine. Her father, Thomas Laighton, was a lighthouse keeper on several of the islands. After her marriage and a move to Massachusetts, she moved back to Appledore Island in Maine and became the hostess of her father's hotel, the Appledore House, and welcomed many New England literary and artistic notables to the island. Her garden on Appledore was famous. Her poems first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and she became one of America's favorite authors in the late 19th century.

Rhode Island

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

A Providence native and author of horror stories and novels, Lovecraft is considered the father of American science fiction and a successor to Edgar Allen Poe. Some of his stories describe an imaginary place named Arkham that was based on Providence. He was born in 1890 at the house currently numbered 454 Angell Street. His fascination with the macabre and weird may have begun with the stories he heard from his grandfather.

The Gravesite of H. P. Lovecraft

Clement C. Moore (1779-1863)

A man known throughout the Western world as the author of the poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" and who created the sentimental image of Christmas at home, was born in 1779 in Manhattan. When he wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas" in 1822, at the age of 43, Moore was a professor of Oriental and Greek literature at the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He died in Newport, his summer home, in 1863.

Vermont

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Rudyard Kipling carved a place for himself as poet of the British Empire and herald of the British soldier, whom he glorified in many of his works. Kipling was born in 1865 in Bombay, India. As a child, he was educated in England, but he returned in his teens to India. Returning to England in 1889, Kipling won instant success with Barrack-Room Ballads. In 1892 he and his wife moved to America and sought peace and privacy near Mrs. Kipling's family in Vermont. Kipling had a new house constructed in the popular Shingle style and named it Naulakha, which means "precious jewel." At Naulakha Kipling wrote "The Jungle Book" and "Captains Courageous."

Naulakha (Kipling House)
Kipling Road
Dummerston, VT

Mowgli, the jungle boy, Shere Khan, the ruthless tiger, and Bagheera, the fearsome panther — all inhabitants of "The Jungle Books" by Rudyard Kipling — were brought to life in the mountains of Vermont, where Kipling lived and wrote at his home, Naulakha, from 1892 to 1896. Naulakha has been restored by the Landmark Trust, a British foundation devoted that preserves historic homes. Many of the original Kipling furnishings remained after the house was sold by the Kipling family in 1903. The Kiplings left desk at which Kipling wrote The Jungle Book series and a teakwood sideboard from India. It is not open to the public but is visible from public roads.

Marlboro College Rice-Aron Library
64 Dalrymple Road
Marlboro, Vermont

802-258-9221
Rice-Aron Library at Marlboro College houses an intriguing Rudyard Kipling collection focusing on the writer's stay in Vermont.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Robert Frost, whose writings are often considered to capture the heart and soul of New England, was born in 1874 in San Francisco. When he was 11 his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1900, Frost's grandfather bought a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, for Robert's use. For Frost, the farm was an ideal setting to raise his family and write poetry in private. The Frost family moved to England in 1912. There, Frost was influenced by several British poets. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two collections and his reputation was established. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, eventually winning four Pulitzer Prizes.