Boston Bibliophilia

Last week, I spent my sightseeing time at a few of Boston’s literary landmarks.

On every tourist “to do” list that I’ve read, the Boston Public Library was always been ranked highly as one of things you absolutely must see. Located in Copley Square and directly across from Boston’s renowned Trinity Church, the main building of the Boston Public Library looks very grand and imposing, with this phrase carved above the columns: “The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty”. When the library was started in 1848, Boston was the first place to create a public library system; it was a revolutionary idea to have a communal space where the city’s richest and poorest citizens had equal access to knowledge.

If you’re actually looking to check out books (like I was), it’s probably one of the least user-friendly libraries I have ever been to, which is a shame. But if you’re just hoping to check out some beautiful artwork and impressive architecture, the Boston Public Library is a great place to visit!

By the way, I did not take these pictures. Just a disclaimer, in case you thought that my photography skills were way better than they actually are!

My next literary landmark stop was a bit of an accidental discovery. Despite the fact that it took an hour to get there (or 17 bus stops, in commuters’ terms), I decided to make the trek out to South Boston’s Pleasure Bay for two reasons:

1. From the map, it looked as though I might be able to see the ocean from Pleasure Bay, and my craving for being at the beach is almost as bad as my current craving for meat (which I haven’t eaten in about a month. Protein-packed canned beans all the way, baby).
2. I really hoped that Pleasure Bay would have some sort of carnival-esque resemblance to Pleasure Island in Pinocchio, complete with cigar-smoking donkey children playing billiards. I knew that was never going to happen, but a girl can dream.

Pleasure Island, no. But Castle Island, yes. It turns out that South Boston’s Pleasure Bay is connected to Castle Island, where you can visit Fort Independence. This star-shaped fortress has held its strategic location in the Boston Harbor since the 1630s, and was first known as Castle William, named after King William III of England. The fort that you can visit today is actually a structure that has been rebuilt many, many times in the last 300 years, but it is still considered to be the oldest continuously fortified site in the United States.

One of Fort Independence’s quirky claims to fame is that it supposedly served as inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s infamous short story, “The Cask of Amontillado”. In case you need a Sparknotes refresher, the plot to this story has to do with revenge and murder (surprise, surprise), culminating in the story’s narrator walling up his still-living enemy in the dark catacombs. You know, just a typical “Poemance”. Whether Poe’s connection to Fort Independence is true or not is hotly debated, considering the fact that Poe hated Boston. And, to be honest, Boston hated Poe back. The slightly disturbed writer was born in Beacon Hill, but is more known for his connections to Baltimore and Philadelphia than he is for being a Boston native.

Boston breeds good writers, and famous names like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau all hailed from the Boston area. Even Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Emily Dickinson – who weren’t from Boston – all spent a significant amount of time here in the city. Boston adores its writers, and it couldn’t be more proud of its role as a literary hotbed for the intellectually and creatively inclined. But back in the 1800s, Boston and its posh literary society tried to pretend that Poe didn’t exist; by the refined standards of 19th-century Bostonian society, Poe and his sloppy habits and writing style were an embarrassment to literature, so his work was often ridiculed here.

This past weekend was the annual Boston Book Festival and as part of the festivities they offered free walking tours around the Back Bay, which is where many other literary landmarks are located. This tour was awesome because I had been planning on paying to take a similar walking tour! So finding a FREE one was a total score! Although not included on the tour, my guide mentioned a statue of Edgar Allan Poe that was just installed about three weeks ago, and said that this brand new statue is Boston’s only tribute to the writer. I went and found it after the tour:

Despite the Poe-iness of this post, I’m actually not a die hard Edgar Allan Poe fan. I just think that it’s fascinating that – in a city with such an overwhelming focus on literary history – Boston is just now paying tribute to one of America’s most iconic writers! Boston loves when it can slap an official plaque onto the side of a building to commemorate the important person, place, or thing that happened there, but that’s not the case when it comes to locations connected with the master of macabre. In fact, Poe’s childhood home is apparently a sub par burrito restaurant now…

…Quoth the Raven, nunca mas.

Tags: books, Boston, Castle Island, Edgar Allan Poe, history, library, literature, Pleasure Bay, reading, South Boston, tourist, travel, traveling