The Wordsworth Trust has acquired Rydal Mount, a second home for the poet, making him one of a handful of authors with more than one residence open to the public. The purchase follows a surge in visitors to Dove Cottage, sparked by a BBC series that portrayed a minor Austen character as a Wordsworth enthusiast.
A year of growth for the Wordsworth Trust
The trust, which owns Dove Cottage in Cumbria, bought Rydal Mount two miles to the east. When it reopens, Wordsworth will join Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy as authors with multiple homes open to visitors.
The success of the BBC television series The Other Bennet Sister – which showed Mary, a character from Austen's Pride and Prejudice, as a Wordsworth fan – has led to an influx of visitors to Dove Cottage.
Evocative homes and curatorial challenges
Writers' homes can be extraordinarily evocative, brought to life by knowledgeable guides. The modest cottages of Hardy and Coleridge contrast with aristocratic grandeur and remind visitors how ordinary people lived. Homes like Monk's House in East Sussex and Keats House in Hampstead carry unavoidable shadows of death.
Rydal Mount was sold by its previous owners partly due to a drop in numbers, and curators must capitalise on new interest. The Brontë Parsonage in Yorkshire hosted an exhibition for a new Wuthering Heights film, and Anne Hathaway's cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon offers Hamnet tours.
Commemorating writers beyond museums
Turning homes into museums is not the only way to commemorate writers. Edinburgh's Waverley station is the only one in the world named after a novel, with a Walter Scott monument across the road. National portrait galleries in Edinburgh and London depict authors, and blue plaques adorn buildings across the UK.
No writer of colour has yet had their British home turned into a museum, partly because this transformation usually happens years after death. Immigrants from India, the Caribbean and Africa mostly made their mark from the mid-20th century onwards. More houses or flats may open in future; VS Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival describes his years in a borrowed Wiltshire cottage.
George Eliot's missing home
George Eliot's absence from the map of homes is perplexing, especially since Middlemarch topped two Guardian polls. Her London house with George Henry Lewes was demolished, the Arbury Estate where she was born is closed, and efforts to restore a building near Nuneaton have not succeeded. A replica of her sitting room is in Nuneaton's museum, and Coventry's Herbert Art Gallery has her piano and desk. The 150th anniversary of her death falls in 2030, and fundraisers should be encouraged to try again.
