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The Poe Museum holds the world’s finest collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s manuscripts, letters, first editions, memorabilia, and personal belongings. Open since 1922, the museum is only blocks away from Poe’s first Richmond home and his first place of employment, the _Southern Literary Messenger_. The museum provides a retreat into early nineteenth-century Richmond, where Poe lived and worked. Unique artifacts from Poe’s life on display include the Poe family Bible, Poe’s walking stick, and first editions of poetry bearing Poe’s handwritten notes and inscriptions.

The National Willa Cather Center offers guided educational tours of Willa Cather’s childhood home, her beloved Red Cloud Opera House, and other historic buildings related to Cather’s life and writing. Although she lived for most of her life in the Northeast, especially New York, and traveled extensively, the childhood years she spent in Nebraska left an indelible impression on Cather, and her depictions of the Nebraska prairie and farming communities were important milestones in American literature. The lovingly restored childhood home contains many family artifacts, including furniture, canned goods, prints and artwork, and family photographs and books. The site is preserved in partnership with The Nebraska State Historical Society.

In 1925 Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and her husband, Eugen Boissevain, a Dutch importer, purchased the property at Steepletop, a nineteenth-century farmhouse, in Austerlitz, New York. They spent the next twenty-five years creating both a peaceful place where Millay could write and a social gathering spot that their friends— writers, musicians, and others—could enjoy. Today, the house still holds all of her furniture, books, and other possessions, many of which remain where they were on the day she died in 1950. Visitors to Steepletop can view an unrestored room in a “Behind the Scenes” tour, see the gardens, walk the Poetry Trail created by the Friends of the Millay Society, visit the gallery in the new Visitors Center at Tamarack Cottage, purchase Millay memorabilia and books at the gift shop, and enjoy a film about life at Steepletop when Millay and then her sister, Norma, lived there.

In 1914, when poet Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una first saw the unspoiled beauty of the Carmel-Big Sur coast south of California’s Monterey Peninsula, they knew they had found their “inevitable place.” Over the next decade, on a windswept, barren promontory, Jeffers built Tor House and Hawk Tower as a refuge for himself and his family. It was in Tor House that Jeffers wrote all of his major poetic works, culminating in 1947 with the critically acclaimed adaptation of _Medea_ for the Broadway stage. Visitors can tour Tor House, climb Hawk Tower, stroll through an English cottage garden, and experience the atmosphere that inspired some of America’s finest poetry.

The Mount is a grand but very personal country estate that embodies the life of one of America’s greatest writers. In 1901, eager to escape the society life of New York City and Newport, Rhode Island, Wharton bought 113 acres in Lenox, Massachusetts, then designed and built a residence that would meet her needs as designer, gardener, hostess, and above all, writer. The entire estate was conceived as a complete work of art, informed by French, Italian, and English traditions, yet adapted for the American landscape; it features the classically inspired Main House, an elegant Georgian Revival Stable, formal gardens, and sculpted grounds. Every aspect, including the architecture and interior design, evokes Wharton’s spirit and highly developed aesthetics. Wharton lived at The Mount during a transformational decade full of professional triumphs and emotional turmoil. Here she would write some of her greatest works, including _The House of Mirth_ (1905) and _Ethan Frome_ (1911).

Arrowhead was the homestead that provided for Herman Melville, his wife Lizzie, and their children, as well as a host of extended family members. Spanning fifteen acres of mixed pasture and nearly thirty forested acres in Berkshire County, the farm sits on land originally purchased in 1816 by Melville’s grandfather, Thomas Melville, a major in George Washington’s army who later served as Commissioner of Boston and Charlestown Harbor. Melville fell in love with the family farm as a child and in 1860 moved there with his family from New York City. While there he wrote four novels, beginning with Moby-Dick, and fourteen short pieces including “I and My Chimney,” which celebrates the physical construction of the house. Today, utilizing historical documentation as a visual and cultural guide, Arrowhead is preserved in a sustainable fashion to provide food for the community, showcases the lifestyle of the author with many of his own possessions on view, and hosts a robust program of seasonal events, classes, and workshops.