10 Literary Spots in Boston Where Historic Authors Spent Their Time
When:
Friday, Mar 01, 2024 8:00a -
Tuesday, Dec 31, 2024 9:00p
Friday, Mar 01, 2024 8:00a -
Tuesday, Dec 31, 2024 9:00p
Where:
Boston
Surrounding areas
Boston, MA
Admission:
FREE
Categories:
Art, History, Outside, Photoworthy
Boston is chock full of literary history. A city doesn’t exist for nearly 400 years without a few stories to tell. And those famous authors, whose books were likely on your high school reading list, roamed the same streets that we walk today. Get your literary groove on and check out these sites frequented by famous writers.
by Celina Colby
Where: Downtown
Info: In addition to being the birthplace of Boston Cream Pie, The Omni Parker House was a literary hub frequented by local authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as international writers. It was here that Charles Dickens first recited ‘A Christmas Carol’ to the Saturday Club (a group of writers who met several times a month at the hotel). Dickens stayed at The Omni Parker House whenever he was in town.
Where: Downtown
Info: Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston and although he had a complicated relationship with the city (he considered the literary scene here stodgy), these streets are full of his history. Where the skyscraper at One Boston Place currently stands, was formerly the printing press that originally published ‘A Tell-Tale Heart.’ Edgar Allan Poe Square near the Boston Common pays homage to his legacy with a dynamic statue of the writer.
Where: Downtown
Info: Louisa May Alcott, author of ‘Little Women’ is known for having grown up in Concord in a community similar to the one the March sisters inhabit in the story. But Alcott also lived in Boston both in Beacon Hill and later in a rest home in Roxbury. She would frequently walk to The Boston Athenaeum and spend afternoons reading in the beautiful private library.
Where: Roxbury
Info: Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was a pioneering publisher, journalist, suffragette, and abolitionist. She launched the first national newspaper published by and for African American women and in 1895 she held the first National Conference of Colored Women at this church in Roxbury. [Photo source // CC 4.0]
Where: Downtown
Info: Nathaniel Hawthorne, of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ fame, lived in Boston as well as Salem. While residing in Beacon Hill, Hawthorne worked at the Boston Custom House inspecting ships that came into the Boston Harbor. This was prior to the addition of the iconic clock tower, which was added to the building in the early 1900s and still impacts Boston’s harborside skyline today.
6) Harvard Yard
Where: Cambridge
Info: Dozens of notable writers lounged on the lawn of Harvard Yard in between classes and the pages of books. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, T.S. Eliot, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and Elizabeth Bishop are just a few. You may associate Thoreau with Walden Pond (though if you know the real story he didn’t hang out there as much as he’d like you to believe), but it was here at Harvard where Thoreau’s transcendentalist philosophies and anti-establishment ideas began.
Where: South End
Info: Wally’s is one of oldest family-owned and operated jazz clubs in the country and was part of a thriving jazz scene pioneered by Black musicians in the 1940s. Civil rights activist and writer Malcolm X lived on and off in Roxbury for more than a decade during that jazz heyday. He worked at a ballroom that at the time was across from the Christian Science Center and frequented the jazz clubs down the street. Though we don’t have definitive proof of him at Wally’s, he was a regular at Savoy Café across the street (no longer there) and it’s extremely likely that he also visited this vibrant club. [Photo by Wally's Cafe Jazz Club]
Where: Downtown
Info: ‘Make Way for Ducklings’ is an iconic Massachusetts book, in fact it’s the official children’s book of the state. Author and illustrator Robert McCloskey was inspired to write the charming story because he would often spend time in the Boston Public Garden while studying at art school in Back Bay. After months of feeding the ducks, a story began to form in his mind. Now you can visit a statue by artist Nancy Schön commemorating the book in the garden.
Where: Back Bay
Info: The St. Botolph Club, which is still a prestigious members-only club today, was a hub of the upper-class arts world in the late 1800s. Poet Walt Whitman would do readings there when he visited Boston. The St. Botolph Club is located on Commonwealth Avenue just a few streets over from the Boston Public Library, where the Walt Whitman Collection of historical volumes and archives is housed. [Photo by St. Botolph Club]
Where: Downtown
Info: We think of the Boston Harbor as the site of the famous Boston Tea Party, but tea isn’t the only thing that was on that boat. Phillis Wheatley was the first enslaved person and woman of African descent in the United States or Britain to publish a book. Wheatley’s first book ‘Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral’ was published in London (notably because no Boston publishers would work with her) and all the copies were shipped back to Boston on the same boat as the fated tea. Fortunately, the books were unloaded before the tea riot and did not end up in the Harbor.
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