Notable writers-including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, Julian
Barnes, Margaret MacMillan, and Jenny Uglow-celebrate our
fascination with the houses of famous literary figures, artists,
composers, and politicians of the past What can a house tell us
about the person who lives there? Do we shape the buildings we live
in, or are we formed by the places we call home? And why are we
especially fascinated by the houses of the famous and often
long-dead? In Lives of Houses, notable biographers, historians,
critics, and poets explores these questions and more through
fascinating essays on the houses of great writers, artists,
composers, and politicians of the past. Editors Kate Kennedy and
Hermione Lee are joined by wide-ranging contributors, including
Simon Armitage, Julian Barnes, David Cannadine, Roy Foster,
Alexandra Harris, Daisy Hay, Margaret MacMillan, Alexander Masters,
and Jenny Uglow. We encounter W. H. Auden, living in joyful squalor
in New York's St. Mark's Place, and W. B. Yeats in his flood-prone
tower in the windswept West of Ireland. We meet Benjamin Disraeli,
struggling to keep up appearances, and track the lost houses of
Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. We visit Benjamin Britten in
Aldeburgh, England, and Jean Sibelius at Ainola, Finland. But Lives
of Houses also considers those who are unhoused, unwilling or
unable to establish a home-from the bewildered poet John Clare
wandering the byways of England to the exiled Zimbabwean writer
Dambudzo Marechera living on the streets of London. With more than
forty illustrations, Lives of Houses illuminates what houses mean
to us and how we use them to connect to and think about the past.
The result is a fresh and engaging look at house and home.
Featuring Alexandra Harris on moving house Susan Walker on
Morocco's ancient Roman House of Venus Hermione Lee on biographical
quests for writers' houses Margaret MacMillan on her mother's
Toronto house a poem by Maura Dooley, "Visiting Orchard House,
Concord, Massachusetts"-the house in which Louisa May Alcott wrote
and set her novel Little Women Felicity James on William and
Dorothy Wordsworth's Dove Cottage Robert Douglas-Fairhurst at home
with Tennyson David Cannadine on Winston Churchill's dream house,
Chartwell Jenny Uglow on Edward Lear at San Remo's Villa Emily Lucy
Walker on Benjamin Britten at Aldeburgh, England Seamus Perry on W.
H. Auden at 77 St. Mark's Place, New York City Rebecca Bullard on
Samuel Johnson's houses a poem by Simon Armitage, "The Manor" Daisy
Hay at home with the Disraelis Laura Marcus on H. G. Wells at
Uppark Alexander Masters on the fear of houses Elleke Boehmer on
sites associated with Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera Kate
Kennedy on the mental asylums where World War I poet Ivor Gurney
spent the last years of his life a poem by Bernard O'Donoghue,
"Safe Houses" Roy Foster on W. B. Yeats and Thoor Ballylee Sandra
Mayer on W. H. Auden's Austrian home Gillian Darley on John Soane
and the autobiography of houses Julian Barnes on Jean Sibelius and
Ainola
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