Stories We Tell About Writers and Place
A work of narrative nonfiction by Rebecca Ruth Gould
A Roof of One’s Own explores the stories we tell when we memorialise writers through place. Moving through homes, museums, gardens and landscapes across Britain, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Latin America, it asks what readers seek in these places and how literary memorials reshape the writers we think we know.
Receive new essays, field notes, photographs and occasional updates about the book through The Textual Materialist.
Essays from the project
Some of what I have published so far in connection with this project:
- Why writers’ homes offer an intriguing glimpse into Cairo’s past Condé Nast Traveller.
- Thomas Hardy’s home in Dorset (original publication in The Mantelpiece)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s home in the Quantock Hills (original publication in The Mantelpiece)
- A personal narrative from my trip to Isfahan and the tomb of the poet Sa’eb
- A historical and travel narrative of a trip to Tbilisi in 2023 (original publication in Index on Censorship)
Read the complete Writers’ Homes and Readers’ Lives collection.
Videos from my research
Short films from visits to writers’ homes and literary museums.
Publications and project news
2026: Visit to John Clare’s Cottage in Helpston, Northamptonshire.
2025: “Why writers’ homes offer an intriguing glimpse into Cairo’s past” published in Condé Nast Traveller.
2024: I was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant for research related to this book
2024: Visits to the homes of Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, and Vicente Huidobro in Chile
More resources on writers’ homes
Sait Faik Abasıyanık Museum on Burgazada, Istanbul
Writers’ homes managed by the National Trust
Literary Homes and Museums of Great Britain
