Since the founding of the United States, women have picked up their pens to write and express their ideas, affording them independence and self-sufficiency in days when they had little. By way of their poetry, essays, advice columns, investigative journalism and more, women like Helen Keller, Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Shirley Jackson wrote not only to entertain and inform, but often to simply keep a roof over their heads.

This text offers a unique examination of female New England writers, focusing on their homes. The women wrote in many genres and became literary entrepreneurs, bargaining with editors for higher fees and royalties, participating in marketing campaigns, and seeking advice and help. The homes women bought with their earnings included cottages, suburban houses, farms, and an occasional mansion. Whether modest or luxurious, these houses provided the “room of her own” that Virginia Woolf said every woman needs in order to write. Sometimes that room was an elegant study, and sometimes a corner of the kitchen.

After retiring from the history department at Arizona State University, Beth Luey moved to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and began writing about historic houses. This is her fourth book in this genre, and the first to focus on women.

Beth Luey
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 238
Bibliographic Info: 37 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2023
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9224-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5147-7
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
Introduction 3
Connecticut 7
1. Helen Keller 8
2. Harriet Beecher Stowe 21
3. Ida Tarbell 31
Maine 43
4. Sarah Orne Jewett 44
5. Mary McCarthy and Elizabeth Hardwick 53
6. Edna St. Vincent Millay 67
7. Celia Thaxter 77
Massachusetts 89
8. Louisa May Alcott 90
9. Emily Dickinson 99
10. Sojourner Truth 108
11. Edith Wharton 121
New Hampshire 130
12. Mary Baker Eddy 131
13. Sarah Josepha Hale 141
14. Grace Metalious 150
Rhode Island 159
15. Elleanor Eldridge and Frances Green 160
16. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 167
17. Cynthia Taggart 177
Vermont 183
18. Shirley Jackson 184
19. Grace Paley 197
Chapter Notes 205
Bibliography 219
Index 227