Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford (Connecticut)

The eye-catching Mark Twain House and Museum, built in 1874, lies on Farmington Avenue in Asylum Hill, immediately west of Downtown Hartford in the namesake county of central north Connecticut.

Renowned American author and humorist Mark Twain, or Samuel Langhorne Clemens as his real name was, lived here along with his family for a good 17 years between 1874 and 1891 in a mansion that was portrayed as “part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock” by his biographer Justin Kaplan.

It was designed by New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter in the American High Gothic style, featuring a trademark high-pitched roof, and as legend has intended to evoke the image of a riverboat, apparently out of Twain’s own past as a pilot on Mississippi River.

The towering edifice provided the setting where Twain wrote many of his best known works such as ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “The Prince and the Pauper” and “Life on the Mississippi” during the time he spent here.

Financial struggles saw the family move out to Europe in 1891, exacerbated by the Panic of 1893, so that Twain could lecture to earn money in order to cancel out his debts.

But the sad loss of his daughter Suzy, who stayed with her sister Jean behind, in August 1896 made a return to the house sentimentally impossible – even though Twain substantially recovered in financial terms – and saw the property sold in 1903.

The building later served as a school, a apartment building and a public library branch before it came under the wing of the Mark Twain Memorial group in 1929, saved from demolition courtesy of Katharine Seymour Day who went on to great pains to have it restored to much of its old grandeur by its century anniversary in 1974.

A substantial revamp carried out on mainly on the exterior and the surrounding grounds in 1999 saw the house return to the state it was back in its golden days of the 1880s.

Today, a noted museum, it contains about 50000 artefacts, historic photographs, manuscripts and furnishings as well as Tiffany glass while it has seen celebrity appearances by the likes of Stephen King, Judith Blume and John Grisham in its feature events.

Mark Twain said

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

Mark Twain said

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

Mark Twain said

“The source of all humour is not laughter, but sorrow”

Mark Twain said

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear”

Mark Twain said

“Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics, and your opponents will do it for you.”

Mark Twain said

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Mark Twain said

“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”

Mark Twain said

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, born to a couple of actors in Boston on 19 January 1809, was an American writer, poet, editor and probably most known as literary critic, considered a rather harsh one come to that, in his time.

As a matter of fact, fellow critic James Russell Lowell called him “the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America.”

He was among the first American writers that tried to earn a living by writing alone and often struggled during what was a difficult time for publishing in the States, underlined by the crisis of the Panic of 1837 that lasted well into the 1840s.

He became particularly known for his poetry and short stories, dealing largely with mystery, gothic and the macabre, while he was hailed as the inventor of detective fiction as well as substantially contributing to the emerging then genre of science fiction.

Among his best known works were poems such as “To Helen,” “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee”, the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” as well as his supernatural horror story “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

He died under mysterious circumstances at 40 years of age in early (7) October 1849, with his death certificate and medical record lost.