How many museums can one person have dedicated to celebrating his literary accomplishments? Seems many.I'm happy that CBS news recently took American viewers inside (via video) Hemingway's house in Cuba. I, for one, see this as a literary destination worth making my way to. I only wish I could have gotten there before the preservationists. It looks a tad too tidy, too perfectly restored to the "Hemingway Period"
for my current tastes.But Hemingway has so many house museums, that you have to be amazed at the Hemingway literary tourism industry. His fiction hardly seems domestic to me.
He has a Birthplace in Oak Park, Il., the Key West House, and the last house he lived in in Idaho, which now belongs to the Nature Conservancy in Idaho. And of course, there is the C
uba house.And yet, the Kansas City, Mo. house where Hemingway lived while working for the Kansas City Star seems to have burned to the ground last year with little notice. There must be others waiting to be restored by an enterprising spirit. Perhaps you can always have one more.
It makes me wonder, which literary figure as the most historic sites/house museums?
2 comments:
Chekhov (6 house-museums, 8 museums/sites overall)
Schiller (6 house, 7 total)
Burns (5 and 7)
Twain (4 and 6)
Dickens (5--all houses)
Hemingway (4 and 5)
Poe (4 and 5)
Some of the things I am counting as houses are preserved rooms, such as Poe's at the University of Virginia and the Twain exhibit, which I believe includes his study, in Elmira.
The Chekhov houses (these lists are 10 years old--some of these may no longer be open) are: Taganrog (birthplace), Moscow (house-museum), Melikhovo (estate), Yalta (house-museum), Hurzuf (dacha) and Sumy (museum).
The Schiller houses are: Marbach-am-Neckar (birthplace), Bauerbach (museum), Weimar (Schillerhaus), Jena (Gartenhaus), Leipzig (Schillerhaus) and Dresden (Schillerhauschen).
I will respond to some of the other questions you have posed one day when I am less tired.
I like the site--Literary tourist (and Philadelphia area native)
It's hard to count all the houses (and to know when a house counts--does it count if it's a replica, if it's been moved from its original location, etc.)!
By my count there are at least 6 houses devoted to remembering --but I'd love to know about the historic sites you've identified.
Twain Houses:
Adult home in Hartford, Ct.
Childhood home in Hannibal, Mo.
Birthplace in Florida, Mo.
Summer home in Elmira, Ny. (Quarry Farm belonged to his sister-in-law and is now part of the Center for Mark Twain Studies, which also oversees his study.)
House a Jackass Hill, Ca.
The house where he was conceived at Museum of Appalachia, Tn.
(Can you tell I have a thing for Twain?)
There may well be more.
I'd love to hear more about the sites you've identified--
And I'd especially love to know about any contemporary Philadelphia sites. It seems like literary Philadelphia is under-explored!
Thanks for your comments!
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