{"id":1259,"date":"2018-04-28T20:05:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-28T20:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2025-09-21T18:45:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T22:45:51","slug":"jennifer-harris-hilary-iris-lowe-from-page-to-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2018\/04\/28\/jennifer-harris-hilary-iris-lowe-from-page-to-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Harris and Hilary Iris Lowe, eds. From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of Authors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jennifer Harris and Hilary Iris Lowe, eds. From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of Authors<\/h1>\n\n
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Editor<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Jennifer Harris and Hilary Iris Lowe, eds. From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of Authors<\/em><\/a>. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017. v, 244p., ill. ISBN 9781625342331. $28.95.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This examination of literary tourist destinations \u2013 from birthplaces to graves and from real-life models for fictional settings to spaces where texts were written \u2013 is built upon the dictum that American literature is more than \u201csimply a matter of words on a page\u201d (1). Rather, it emerges from a m\u00e9lange of \u201ccollaborative [efforts] between author, preservationist, curator, docent, reader, and tourist,\u201d such that the sites visited by avid tourists are \u201cfunctioning alternately or simultaneously as markers of community, memorials, conduits, exemplars and training grounds in ways authors themselves never imagined\u201d (2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because scholars cannot prescribe readers\u2019 movements as easily as they can syllabi and curricula, literary tourism offers a unique window into American literature and \u201ctells us about the kinds of narratives that have historically been valued in the United States\u201d (2). Editors Harris and Lowe wisely decline to proffer a unified narrative of pilgrims\u2019 motives but instead adapt Benedict Anderson\u2019s \u201cimagined communities\u201d to conclude that each pilgrimage contributes to a sense of \u201cshared heritage\u201d and \u201cownership\u201d of \u201cthe American narrative\u201d (5). Yet the editors\u2019 grounding in leisure sociology ensures that, far from being a patriotic celebration, skepticism about the sites\u2019 commercialism predominates: despite palpable traces of capitalist development \u2013 Harris and Lowe note that \u201ceven Walden Pond has a parking lot\u201d [6] and characterize one author\u2019s statements about her home as \u201cmarketing gold\u201d [7] \u2013 the tourists see what they had been expecting<\/em> to see because their need for \u201caffirmation\u201d is programmed by preexisting cultural narratives (7). In one sense, the editors indulge in circular reasoning as well: the \u201cAmerican imaginary\u201d (5) is reflexively defined by what is visible in these case studies, so indubitably it must be manifested by them. In another sense, Harris and Lowe simply accede to the necessarily heterogeneous nature of edited collections by allowing the topic and scope of the collection to serve as its thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This accession fits the 10 chapters\u2019 interdisciplinary scope, which enfolds American studies, comparative literature, book history, architecture, and history. The contributors research not only the practices of contemporary tourists, but also the rhetoric of literary tourism that frames their experiences and the historical shifts (particularly in technologies of travel and in definitions of authorship) that underwrote that rhetoric. Some chapters diagnose the dearth of tourist resources, including Jennifer Harris\u2019s work on eighteenth-century African-American poet Jupiter Hammon and Rebecca Rego Barry\u2019s on Susan and Anna Warner. More paradigmatic sites are discussed by Erin Hazard, who investigates Washington Irving\u2019s self-conscious understanding of literary tourism in relation to his own Sunnyside, and Hilary Irish Lowe, who explores the resonances of Quarry Farm for Mark Twain scholars. Some of the volume\u2019s strongest works deconstruct the normative notion of an artist\u2019s home: Klara-Stephanie Szlez\u00e1k denies the singularity of Henry David Thoreau\u2019s Concord, Michelle McClellan questions why certain houses occupied by Laura Ingalls Wilder are popular tourist destinations while others are not, and Caroline Hellman explores the \u201crepatriation\u201d of Edith Warton\u2019s library to her carefully designed home, The Mount, to critique the \u201cfalse hierarchy\u201d that maintains that \u201cthe interest in the life of an author beyond understanding words on a page is \u2018middlebrow\u2019 or unsophisticated\u201d (159). Challenging travel as a prerequisite for literary tourism, Mara Scanlon analyzes the mediated \u201cWhitmania\u201d of digital tourism, Ben De Bruyn turns his attention to coffee table books, and Susann Bishop \u2013 in a chapter of particular interest to SHARPists \u2013 both analyzes and presents a bibliography of tourism guides. All of these promise a bright future for the study of literary tourism, especially through the called-for creation of \u201ca more inclusive literary itinerary\u201d (15) that centralizes African-American authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shawna Ross
Texas A&M University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Harris and Hilary Iris Lowe, eds. From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of Authors. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017. v, 244p., ill. ISBN 9781625342331. $28.95. This examination of literary tourist destinations \u2013 from birthplaces to graves and from real-life models for fictional settings to spaces where texts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[1942,1955],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-north-america","tag-reception"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5730,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions\/5730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}