A Novel Idea: Taking a Literary Vacation
By: Joe Volz Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2003-05-13 14:29:00-04:00
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, Frederick Douglass and Edgar Allan Poe are literary giants in the United States and each has a home, a museum or a national historical site for families to explore.
The authors share a common fascination with the human condition. Using the perspective gained from living in their own particular time and place, they wrote about people struggling with the dilemmas of love and passion, justice and injustice, and the desire to be free.
By visiting the places these authors lived and loved, you can get a better idea of their motivations and lives.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Renowned author Nathaniel Hawthorne belonged to no organized religion but many of his short stories and novels were heavily weighted with sin, guilt and forgiveness.
Raised in the early 1800s in Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne was strongly influenced by his 17th century Puritan ancestors who, convinced they were literally battling the devil, tried to stamp out witchcraft in the infamous Salem witch trials.
You can visit the haunted house Hawthorne wrote about in the House of Seven Gables or the U.S. Customs House, where he worked as an agent to support his family. You can also watch a reenactment of the Salem witch trials and then visit the cemetery that commemorates some of the people who were hanged for practicing witchcraft.
Willa Cather
A visit to the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial in Red Cloud, Nebraska, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning author moved from Virginia as a child of 9, brings you into the heart of the Midwest. Red Cloud is six miles from the Kansas border in south central Nebraska.
Steeped in stories from childhood on, Cather wrote engrossing novels often set in the frontier days of the state. Her most loved and partly autobiographical novel, "My Antonia," tells about a heroic pioneer woman from Bohemia and the Swedish man who came to share her love of the Nebraska plains.
Starting in Red Cloud, you can visit numerous sites in the area designated by the Nebraska State Legislature as "Catherland." It includes the Western half of Webster County. Here you can explore more than 190 historic sites, including hiking in a 610-acre tract of native grassland. It's a reminder of the plains before settlers came to stay.
Edgar Allan Poe
The days of the famed author of the macabre can be revisited in both Richmond, Virginia, and Baltimore, Maryland.
The Edgar Allan Poe Museum provides a retreat into 19th century Richmond. Located several blocks from Poe's home and his first writing job at the Southern Literary Messenger, the museum introduces visitors to Poe through its many exhibits.
They include excerpts from Poe's poetry and fiction to provide a glimpse into the world of the mysterious that the author writes about in such stories as "The Fall of the House of Usher."
In Baltimore, head for the Baltimore Poe House, now a museum, where the author lived with several relatives before moving to Richmond in his 20s. Here you can see a telescope reputedly used by Poe and a set of Gustave Dore's 1884 illustrations for Poe's often quoted poem, "The Raven."
A series of videos at the House tells visitors about Poe and his writing life and death. It also has pictures of the cognac left over the years at Poe's grave by the mysterious Poe Toaster.
To really get a feel for Poe and his works, you may want to visit Baltimore around Halloween. That's when the museum recreates a creepy, scary scene worthy of Poe himself.
Frederick Douglass
Plan a visit to Cedar Hill, overlooking Washington, D.C., the home writer Frederick Douglass bought in 1877. His home was declared a National Historic Site by the government in 1988.
Douglass was born a slave and, once freed, became a jack-of-all-trades. He was a fearless campaigner for abolition, human rights and civil rights in his many writings and speeches and as U.S. Marshall for the District of Columbia. His writings include "My Escape from Slavery" and "Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass."
The best place to start your visit is with the 17-minute film of the "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass." Then tour his home to discover more about his later life and government service.
Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
Take a virtual tour of Douglass'd study.
Books
Find these books online at www.BarnesandNoble.com.
The Scarlet Letter
By Nathaniel Hawthorne, Introduction by Brenda Wineapple, Mass Market Paperbacks, October 1999
My Antonia
By Willa Cather, Kathleen Norris, Houghton Mifflin Company, August 1995
The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings
By Edgar Allan Poe, Mass Market Paperback, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, November 1981
Edgar Allan Poe Poems
By Edgar Allan Poe, Lisa Lipkin (editor), Book Sales, Inc., September 2001
The Classic Slave Narratives
Henry Louis Gates (editor), NAL, January 2002
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