here’s something about seeing where our favorite authors penned some of their most iconic works. From Victor Hugo’s home where he lived in exile to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West home that is overrun with cats, here is a peek inside the creative dens of some of the worlds most influential writers.
1. Joan Didion
Didion has been fairly transient over the past decades. The female icon is famous for her works such as, “The White Album,” and “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”. The overwhelming amount of tragedy she has experienced is also explicitly documented in other works, different chapters in her life have led from moves between New York and California.
Image courtesy of Dame Magazine
2. Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway’s Key West home has become a sort of character in and of itself. The author resided here after his time in Cuba and it now operates as a museum in homage to him. Hemingway famously had many cats, and despite the decades that have passed dozens of them still wander on the property.
Image courtesy of Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum
3. Truman Capote
Capote wrote “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood” in the basement of this Brooklyn Heights townhouse.
Image courtesy of Shmoop
4. Tennessee Williams
Williams house hopped through New Orleans residing primarily in the French Quarter district. Pictured below is the house where the author, who when he grew up went on to write theater staples such as “Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie,” was born in Columbus, Mississippi.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Showers
5. Henry Miller
Miller, who passed in 1980, lived in and wrote a number of his greatest works in this cabin in Big Sur, California. The author was frequently visited by the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg who would travel down from San Francisco.
Image courtesy of Full Stop
6. Keith Richards
Okay, admittedly Keith Richards isn’t an author by trade. However, the legendary guitarist has penned a couple of books in the past years including his autobiography, “Life,” and a children’s story called “Gus and Me.” Richards is photographed here in his library in the family’s Connecticut home.
Image courtesy of Tumblr
7. Alice Walker
Notable author and feminist, Alice Walker – who wrote one of the most important novels of the 20th century, “The Color Purple” – is shown below writing at her home in Jackson, Mississippi.
Image courtesy of The Leading Edge
8. Patti Smith
Patti Smith is a renaissance woman. Smith is known for her work ranging from politically fueled genre-defying music, to her poetry and books. Entering a new chapter of her life, Smith relocated to a hundred-year-old bungalow in the Rockaways.
Image courtesy of The New York Times
9. Stephen King
What did you expect? This prolific horror writer’s home – in Bangor, Maine – looks straight out of one of the film adaptations of his books. In other words, terrifying.
Image courtesy of Bangor Daily News
10. Victor Hugo
Author, Victor Hugo, penned iconic works such as “Les Miserables” while in exile on the island of Guernsey. After Napoleon III’s coup d’état, in 1851, Hugo fled for the Channel Islands. His home, called the Hauteville House, is open for tours for literature lovers.
Image courtesy of Guernsey
Words by Katy Hallowell
