Man caves

On the subject of Hemingway yesterday...I came across this picture of his writing room. This is the spot in Key West, Florida, where Hemingway penned For Whom the Bell Tolls and Death in the Afternoon, probably while drinking a Scotch, smoking a cigar and contemplating the mementos he collected from his adventures in Africa and Cuba. Hemingway converted an old carriage house on his property into this writing studio. Note his famous Royal typewriter on the desk.

Also found two photos of Mark Twain's man cave high atop a hill on his sister's property in Elmira, New York. In this sanctuary Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In 1874 he described his writing hut in a letter to William Dean Howells:

“It is the loveliest study you ever saw…octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window…perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills. It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes behind the hills beyond and the rain beats upon the roof over my head—imagine the luxury of it.”

I love my writing room too. It just needs thousands more words to spill out of it...