The Transatlantic Home Network: Discovering Sir Walter Scott in American Authors’ Houses

Abstract

Westover’s chapter recalls the symbolic potency of Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford House, the first modern author’s home designed as a destination for tourists. As nineteenth-century Americans set out to create and celebrate their own literary landmarks, especially in the form of authors’ homes, Abbotsford exercised an influence both architectural and decorative. Above all, perhaps, Abbotsford shaped American authors’ efforts to display their connections with other writers. The result was a self-referential ‘network’ of literary homes. Scott’s cultural saturation of the USA is evident in many American authors’ homes, including Irving’s, Cooper’s, Emerson’s, and Longfellow’s, even if today, due to Scott’s dramatic twentieth-century decline in popularity, many visitors cannot recognize it. This chapter aims to make this neglected evidence more legible while shedding light on the highly social and materialist construction of a fully domesticated, yet transnational Anglophone canon.

This chapter first took form as a presentation for the 2015 MLA Convention, part of a special session organized by Caroline McCracken-Flesher. Thanks to her and to co-panelists Alison Booth, Richard Hill, and Fiona Robertson, as well as to those who offered feedback: Alex Dick, Michael Macovski, Ann Rigney, and Brian Wall. Additionally, I am grateful for the assistance of Kirsty Archer-Thompson, Heritage and Engagement Manager at Abbotsford House; Bay Bancroft, President of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Memorial Association; Christine Wirth, Archives Specialist at Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site along with David Daly, Museum Collections Manager; the staff at the Prints and Drawings Study Room at the National Gallery of Scotland; Kirsten Wise, Curator of the Cayuga Museum; and Dr. Daniel Westover, my first reader.