Landscapes, Literature, and a Lace Reader Tour

I had the pleasure of spending the morning with a group of travel writers from Germany,Austria, and Switzerland. They are in New England researching trips inspired by Landscapes

They will experience landmarks and landscapes that influenced the literature of Hawthorne, Mellville, Thoreau, Twain, Stowe, Longfellow and Fitgerald. They started in Salem, and then will travel to Concord (Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott), Hartford, CT (Twain), New Bedford (Melville), Boston and Cambridge (Longfellow).

While in Salem the group stayed in the Hawthorne Hotel and visited The House of the Seven Gables. We took a new Lace Reader tour aboard the Salem Trolley, with a guide from the House of the Seven Gables. The tour blends Salem history and the fiction of Brunonia Barry's bestselling novel, The Lace Reader. It was a great opportunity to see how Salem has inspired American fiction throughout history.

After our contemporary literature experience, the group saw the mansion that inspired

Hawthorne's The House of the Seven

Gables, and we talked briefly aboard the

Trolley about The Custom House where Hawthorne worked prior to writing The Scarlet Letter. You can see Hawthorne's office in the Custom House on guided tours with the National Park Service.

If you have a group that is interested in The Lace Reader Tour, contact The House of the Seven Gables. The full tour is 2 1/2 hours long, and includes recorded passages read by author

Brunonia Barry.

The pictures include: our trolley tour's starting point at the Hawthorne Hotel, our tour guide,

Scott, with Pickering Light behind him, taking pictures of Salem Harbor and Pickering Light on Winter Island, and the group at the House of the Seven Gables.