Literary Northeast

Books crowd the shelves of Millay’s library at Steepletop.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

The gallery at Millay’s home.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

Millay’s size 3 boots: She was a diminutive woman with bright red hair and a mellifluous voice.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

Edith Wharton and her husband, Teddy, built their home, known as the Mount, in the early 1900s near Lenox, Mass.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

The Whartons’ frequent trips to Europe inspired the design of the couple’s house.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

An imagined re-creation of a table set for a dinner party at the Mount, where Wharton hosted guests such as Henry James.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

Wharton patterned parts of the Mount’s extensive gardens on the landscapes of landmark Italian villas that she had toured and written about.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

The cupola at the Mount provides views of Laurel Lake and the Stockbridge Bowl, another body of water.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

Dickinson lived most of her life in the Homestead, an imposing house built in the early 1800s in Amherst, Mass., by her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)

Dickinson polished her verse in her second-floor bedroom, where visitors can see her single sleigh bed and a replica of her tiny writing table.  (Susan Spano / For The Times)