Cowper\u2019s Summerhouse, Olney<\/strong><\/p>\n Writers tend to own little real estate \u2013 Cowper actually borrowed this little summerhouse from a neighbour. He described it in a letter affectionately as \u2018my nutshell of a Summer House, which is my verse manufactory\u2019. Whether it is a nutshell or a factory, it is conceived (like his verse) as exempt from domestic economy proper.<\/p>\n Also on Cowper, see\u00a0https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/?p=206<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0Thoreau\u2019s Cabin, Concord, MA<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a reconstruction of the cabin in a slightly different location near the pond. Henry David Thoreau spent two years living close to nature in the cabin in the 1840’s and his resulting book “Walden” is a reflection on simple living in natural surroundings. It is amazing to think that this experience was well before the civil war and Laura Ingalls Wilder going west in the Little House on the Prairie.<\/p><\/div>\n In strong contrast, Thoreau\u2019s cabin in the woods conceived writing as a radical form of domestic economy that would serve as an example to a nation in danger of decadence: \u2018When I wrote the following pages\u2026I lived alone, in the woods\u2026in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond,\u2019 he states in Walden<\/em> (1854). Thoreau\u2019s ideal of self-sufficient self-making realised in this cabin would become so important in American culture that this reconstruction is just one of three.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/33-127-Cowpers-Summerhouse.jpg\")
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