The Author’s Effects

A fascinating account of the emergence of the writer's house museum over the course of the nineteenth century in Britain, Europe, and North America.

It considers the museum as a cultural form and asks why it appeared and how it has constructed authorial afterlife for readers individually and collectively.

Introduction; 1 Remains: Burns' skull and Keats' hair; 2 Bodies: Petrarch's cat and Poe's Raven; 3 Clothing: Bronte's bonnet and Dickinson's dress; 4 Furniture: Shakespeare's chair and Austen's desk; 5 Household Effects: Johnson's coffee-pot and Twain's effigy; 6 Glass: Woolf's spectacles and Freud's mirror; 7 Outhouses: Thoreau's cabin and Dumas' prison; 8 Enchanted Ground: Scott's Abbotsford, Irving's Sunnyside, Shakespeare's New Place; 9 Exit through the Gift-shop