ATLANTA — Standing in the front yard of the Wren’s Nest in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood and admiring the stunning Queen Anne Victorian home, I was about to embark on a zip-a-dee-do-dah literary journey across the whole United States of Georgia. Before sunset, I would hit four stops in a single day, including not only the Wren’s Nest, but also the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum on Peachtree Street and then the Erskine Caldwell home and Lewis Grizzard Museum in Moreland.
The Wren’s Nest, once the home of Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus Tales, is only the one stop along Georgia’s literary trail marking the homes or birthplaces of the state’s best-known and loved authors. The Georgia portion is but one of the triumvirates, including those in Alabama and Mississippi, that are strung along the Southern Literary Trail (). The SLT links together writers whose impact defined the literature of the South.
In addition to the sites in Georgia, the SLT incorporates 11 writers from Alabama, including Lillian Hellman in Demopolis; William Bradford Huie in Hartselle; Truman Capote and Harper Lee in Monroeville; Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Montgomery; Eugene Walter, William March and Albert Murray in Mobile; and Murray and Ralph Ellison in Tuskegee. Farther west in Mississippi, the literary traveler can uncover the footfalls of Tennessee Williams in Clarksdale and Columbus; Walker Percy and Shelby Foote in Greenville; Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker Alexander and Richard Wright in Jackson; Wright in Natchez; and William Faulkner in Oxford.
Other great writers are from Georgia, and while you can certainly visit the towns from which they hail, there are no museums or monuments dedicated to such authors as Baxley’s Caroline Pafford Miller, Georgia’s first Pulitzer Prize winner for “Lamb in His Bosom.” Harry Crews’ (“A Childhood: The Biography of a Place”) hometown is Alma, while Fitzgerald is where Frances Mayes, author of “Under the Tuscan Sun,” grew up. Olive Ann Burns (“Cold Sassy Tree”) grew up in Commerce, while Royston was home to Terry Kay, author of “To Dance with the White Dog,” one of the sweetest, most heartrending novels ever set in Georgia.
These are the official stops along the Georgia Literary Trail, combined with a few side “hops” to other great writers:
The yard at the Wren’s Nest, crammed with dogwoods, azaleas, and wisteria, wraps itself around the Reconstruction era-home that Harris lived in from 1881 and until 1908. I love how it came to have such a wonderful name: a family of wrens built a nest in the mailbox, and no one in the family could bear to disturb it. A second mailbox was added so that the birds could be saved. A collection of stuffed animals including B’rer Fox, B’rer Bear, and B’rer Rabbit now share part of the circa-1870 home where Harris recorded the fascinating Uncle Remus stories in the hypnotizing dialect of the African slaves. 1050 Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, Atlanta. Telephone (404) 753-7735 or visit .
Cocooned by the towering skyscrapers of Atlanta, the cherished landmark of the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum is Georgia history personified. Mitchell lived here with her husband, John Marsh, while she penned Gone with the Wind, without a shadow of a doubt the most famous novel ever written about the South. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operated by the Atlanta History Center, the Tudor Revival house was first built in 1899 as a single family home and was later renovated into rental units known as the Crescent Apartments. 990 Peachtree Street, Atlanta. Telephone 404- 249-7015 or visit .
Less than an hour’s drive southwest from Atlanta is tiny hamlet of Moreland and the Erskine Caldwell Birthplace and Museum. Caldwell, the author of the controversial novels “God’s Little Acre” and “Tobacco Road,” is one of the most widely read of Georgia’s authors with 25 novels, 150 short stories and 12 works of nonfiction. He often portrayed rural poverty in Georgia with negative, appalling lowlife redneck characters that seem impossibly absurd even by today’s standards, but still his books sold at least 80 million copies, with three of them made into movies. The circa-1879 home, a simple wooden house on a grassy lot, has recently undergone extensive renovations but is now open to the public. Moreland Square. Hours are by appointment only. Contact or call Winston Skinner at 770-254-8657.
The Lewis Grizzard Museum also is in Moreland, although it’s not officially on the SLT. Grizzard, who wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was perhaps Georgia’s best-known and most loved columnist whose writing was filled with down-home Southern humor. When he died way too young from complications from heart surgery in 1994, nearly all Georgians cried for him. The museum, housed in what appears to be an old gas station that shares space with a defunct monument company, was probably great once, but is badly in need of renovations. The museum was locked tightly, and I couldn’t find anyone in the town of fewer than 400 to let me in. After speaking with the Coweta County Visitors’ Center in Newnan, I learned that the museum will be moved to a new location when enough funds are raised. Contact for more information.
Andalusia Farm, the bucolic home of Flannery O’Connor, is located on Highway 441 (the Eatonton Highway) just north of Milledgeville. She lived and wrote here until her death from lupus in 1964. Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple,” was born in Eatonton near Milledgeville at a place called Ward’s Chapel. Visit or call 478- 454-4029. The Flannery O’Connor Room is located at the Georgia College and State University Museum in Milledgeville. Call 478-445-4391. Visit the Milledgeville and Baldwin County Welcome Center at or the Eatonton-Putnam Chamber of Commerce at .
The Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, the birthplace of Harris, is a log cabin melded together from two original slave cabins. It is not on the SLT list, either, but deserves a visit. It houses a bookstore, gift shop, and Uncle Remus memorabilia including shadowboxes with wooden carvings of “de critters” of b’rers Fox, Possum, Bear, and Rabbit. A statue of B’rer Rabbit stands sentry at the entrance. The museum is located in Turner Park near Highway 441. Telephone 706-485-6856 or visit .
The Sidney Lanier Cottage, another site not on the SLT list but which should be, is located in Macon’s stunningly beautiful Historic District. It is the birthplace of Georgia’s most well-known poet, who wrote the “Marshes of Glynn.” He also was a musician and soldier, and the home houses a collection of artifacts dedicated to him. 935 High Street, Macon. Telephone 478-742-5084 or visit .
The Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home on leafy, flower-filled Lafayette Square in Savannah is where the writer grew up from her birth in 1925 until 1938. The home includes the Bruckheimer Library, a collection of books that the O’Connors owned or had special relevance in their lives. 207 East Charlton Street, Savannah. Telephone 912-233-6014 or visit .
The Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians in Columbus is a tribute to the author of “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” and The Member of the Wedding,” classic novels set in Georgia. The center and her childhood home — the Smith-McCullers House — preserve materials and programs about her life. 1519 Stark Avenue, Columbus. Telephone 706-565-4021 or visit .
The Lillian E. Smith Center for the Creative Arts in Clayton is an artists’ retreat at the Laurel Falls Camp for Girls. It is a place of quiet refuge in the Blue Ridge Mountains that honors the author of “Killers of the Dream” and “Strange Fruit.” “Strange Fruit,” focused on a biracial love affair, was so controversial that at one point the U.S. Postal Service refused to ship copies. Visit for additional information.
