cresswga says:
I have been to Twain's at Hartford but for me I am more interested in seeing the places that were written about than the places they were written.

I wanted to visit Hannibal, MO on a cross country trip to see the town that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were based upon but it never worked out.

I am also looking forward to one day visiting Cannery Row and the rest of the "Steinbeck Country" if I ever make it on my planned California road trip.

tristiseye says:
The most hackneyed answer would be the "white cliffs of Dover," where I did go, since I was an English lit major. And they are as beautiful as Arnold's poem states them to be.

I also went to 9 3/4 quarters at King's Cross which was an exciting moment for any HP fan!

And lastly, I went to the pub where Our Mutual Friend (by Dickens) was based, though the name of the pub escapes me.

Not a book, but I went to the house where Notting Hill was filmed- the beautiful white house at the end of the movie. It was the highlight of my group, as we all cherished the movie.

Jackster12 says:
I haven't actively made any literary pilgrimages, but have stumbled across a few. For instance, I've visited Dickens house in London. But I think of him more when I pass the Hotel Dieu in Paris -- I live not too far away, for at least part of the year -- which is where he spent some time picking up names and stories for a tale of two cities.

I've also spent many an afternoon in the square outside of Victor Hugo's former home. And of course, Notre Dame itself is a temple to his influence. He literally wrote "The Bells of Notre Dame" (known now as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame") to save it from being torn down. I used to walk past it every day on the way to my office.

Also not too far from our place is the apartment where Hemingway lived for a while, just off Place de Contrascarpe. It went up for sale not too long ago, so a friend and I called the realtor and asked for a tour. A humble place with a tiny room and the bathtub in the kitchen.

Jackster12 says:
Still in Paris... walk around the corner and you pass the hotel where George Orwell lived, soaking up experiences that would make it into "Down and Out in Paris and London."

And we've been to all the obvious cafes where the literati hung out too, though you don't get much sense of what it was like in their time anymore. Then it was cheap and French. Now it's expensive and tourist-packed. The coffees alone are $6 and up.

Jackster12 says:
When I lived in Baltimore, we walked the streets Poe walked and visited the graveyard where he's buried. When I visited a friend in Mississippi, we went by Faulkner's old house and saw the tree where a visitor once found him, drunk and naked, singing instead of writing.

Jackster12 says:
And in New York, one of our favorite bars was Pete's Tavern, where O'Henry wrote the famous short story, "The Gift of the Magi" while sitting in the corner. Another favorite, and a lot closer to our apartment in the West Village, was Chumley's. It's closed now, or it was the last I heard, due to structural damage to the building.

But when it was open, it was an old haunt of just about all the famous writers who passed through NYC that you can imagine -- F.Scott Fitzgerald, Faulkner again, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Anäis Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, and J.D. Salinger, to name a few. Rumor has it it was a refuge for runaway slaves long before it was a speakeasy during Prohibition. Chumley's famously has(had) no sign out front, trap doors, etc.

Jackster12 says:
Inside, Chumley's had a warm fireplace with a couple large dogs curled up in front, a decent jukebox and hamburgers, and walls covered with the photos and mementos of the writers who had been through there in the past. It had a bit of a glut of tourists too, but it was still a great place to spend a cold Sunday afternoon.

Hemingway, by the way, spent some time there too. In turn, I also spent some time getting drunk in a few of his favorite old places in Key West. And we did some over-the-wall sight seeing at his house there, now overrun with his descendants of Hemingway's cats.

Jackster12 says:
Speaking of cats, that takes the tour right back around again... because cats are what you see plenty of, aside from gravestones, when you take a tour of the Pere-LaChaise cemetery in Paris (where I'm writing from now). Thanks to the Smiths, Oscar Wilde's grave is the "other" top draw there, after Jim Morrison's. Both are occasionally covered with graffiti from visitors (they get cleaned off often). You can take a literary tour of the rest of the graves there yourself, from right where you are right now, by going here: http://www.pere-lachaise.com

Jackster12 says:
Sorry... can't resist one more... on a trip to write a travel article, my wife and I stayed in a room in an hotel in Vienna, Austria where Mark Twain stayed for a long time and where he watched the funeral of Empress Elizabeth. On our honeymoon, we also stayed in a hotel once visited for a long time by D.H. Lawrence.

Wow... I hadn't realized how it all adds up. Lot more than I thought.

MaggieH says:
Wow @Jackster--the places you have been! Amazing. I was very sorry to read (at NYMag.com) that Chumley's is indeed closed. That's one literary pilgrimage I could easily make. However, Pete's Tavern still lives, so I think I'll celebrate the Gift of the Magi this year by seeking out O. Henry's corner. Thanks!

@cresswga, tristiseye, and jackster12: Do you think seeing these literary sites changed your perception of the writers' works? If so, how? If not, why not?

tristiseye says:
@MaggieH: Although I didn't originally posted it, I read Mrs Dalloway while in London, most of the reading done in Regent's Park. Since I was in London while reading the book, I felt that I understood the book better simply because I was in the environment the book was set in. I could visit the exact spots Woolf described and picture the events more concretely.

I read Our Mutual Friend before going to London, and I definitely appreciated the book a lot more than I would have (despite my adoration of Dickens), again due to the same reason as stated above. Being in the pub, where an infamous scene takes place, was like living the book itself.

Jackster12 says:
You asking that question reminded me of one more place, Thoor Ballyle... the stone tower near Coole Park that Yeats lived and worked in during summers. Beautiful spot, both the tower and the park. Yeats wrote about both of them. And growing up in an Irish American house with a mother who wrote her master's thesis on Yeats, I'd heard about them plenty.

I would say that yes, something about seeing the places they lived and worked changes perception of the works. On the one hand you get that sense that the locations are somehow smaller and more humble or ordinary than you imagined. And on the other, it makes the whole experience more real, more full. In the same way that knowing something about Van Gogh's mental health (or lack thereof) enhances the experience of seeing his paintings.

cresswga says:
tristiseye: That reminds me. When I was in London a few years ago my wife wanted to see where Virginia Wolfe had lived after reading Mrs Dalloway. (And also see one of those old Bloomsbury squares like in the movie Gaslight).

In a similar vein I chose a small Bed & Breakfast to stay in that was on Ebury Street because that was the intended target for a rocket attack in Ian Flemming's novel Moonraker.

MaggieH: I do not feel that visiting these places changed my perception in any way. I believe that all artists are as much a product of their time as well as their surroundings and so visiting somewhere that they once lived can only give you half of the picture. Also, visiting a house where an author spent their last few years as a success is not as interesting in seeing their humble beginnings like Jackster mentioned about Hemmingway.