Literary North America

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was born in a two-room house in Florida, Missouri, in November 1835. The location where the house stood is marked with a stone memorial to the author, who lived in the town for the first four years of his life.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is most famous for the itinerant lifestyle her family led when she was a child, crossing the woods and prairies of America’s Midwest (and, of course, for her accounts of this time, immortalised in the Little House on the Prairie series of children’s books). As such, there are numerous museums dedicated to her travels scattered across the states where her family spent time. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum, in Mansfield, MO, is significant, however, in that it was not part of the Ingalls family journey, but the place where Laura and her husband, Almanzo, bought land, built a home, and lived out their adult lives.

Southern essayist and short story writer, (Mary) Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, GA, in 1925. Her childhood home, where she lived with her parents, Edward O’Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor, until 1938, stands on the edge of Lafayette Square and has been opened to the public as a museum of her life.

Born in Florida, MO, in 1835, Samuel Longhorne Clemens moved to Hannibal, MO at the age of four years, and lived there until he was 17 years old. During that time, he and his family immersed themselves in Hannibal life, with his father acting as the Justice of the Peace, and Sam and his older brother, Orion, contributing to the local newspapers.

A Manhattan local at the time he wrote the children’s classic, Stuart Little, author E.B. White would have had many occasions to visit Central Park. During his visits, he would undoubtedly have seen children and their parents sailing model boats at Conservatory Water (also commonly known as the Model Boat Pond) and he then transplanted those scenes into his own writing.

Edgar Allan Poe was something of a wanderer, having lived in Boston, the United Kingdom, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York at various times during his 40 years of life. He spent six years in Philadelphia (1838-1844) – reportedly the most productive of his life, publishing several works including Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell-tale Heart, and The Fall of the House of Usher – and even in that time lived in multiple houses. The National Historical Site at 532 N. 7th Street was the last house he rented in the city, before returning to New York, and the only property that still exists today.