Literary Museums at Home

Exhibiting and Experiencing Fiction Indoors

Marie, Caroline (ed.)
Chassagnol, Anne (ed.)
Kleiman-Lafon, Sylvie (ed.)

This book, at the intersection of material culture, thing theory, fiction and museology, explores the different ways in which literature is exhibited and appropriated within the domestic, intimate sphere of the home. Certain daily practices involve the exhibition of literature in ways that are similar to those encountered in a museum. Interior decoration and design, bibliomania, homeware, fashion items, not to mention board games or doll’s houses, may all be considered means of fetishising literature within the home. While the book combines academic chapters, from a wide range of literary genres, across centuries and various countries, and interviews of museum directors who currently live in a museum house, it draws attention to the duality that characterises such domestic literary landscape, which simultaneously exhibit the literary and produce literature. The book delves into the past or present ways in which writers and literature lovers inhabit their home, especially when these homes become museum spaces during their lifetime, and when the objects accumulated by these literati-curators are intimately linked to their writing.