Book Lovers’ New England: A Guide to Literary Landmarks

Photographer and essayist Moeschen (Boston and Beyond) offers a leisurely tour of museums, family homes, and other attractions dedicated to New England’s celebrated authors. In Massachusetts, the state which claims far and away the most writers, destinations include the stately home of Edith Wharton, the whimsical Dr. Seuss Museum, and Walden Pond. Connecticut’s attractions include a 2.4-mile pathway in Hartford commemorating a daily walk that poet Wallace Stevens took and a Victorian Gothic Revival home built by Mark Twain that was once described as looking like “a small brick-kiln gone crazy.” Notable New Hampshire locales include Peterborough, the town that inspired Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which he wrote while staying there on a writer’s retreat. Rhode Island and Maine are both homes of horror writers—H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe are claimed by the former, Shirley Jackson and Stephen King by the latter. And Vermont has Robert Frost, though New Hampshire and Massachusetts vie for him as well. While the biographical vignettes can sometimes feel a bit by the numbers, some entries surprise (Maine is home to the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge) and the book pops with luscious photographs, including tantalizing snapshots of Noah Webster’s writing desk and the real-life house with seven gables that inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne. Readers will be raring to visit for themselves. (May)