📍351 Farmington Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105, USA
1874 – 1891“I grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a river town where I watched the steamboats and the enslaved people on the levee, and I spent my young manhood as a pilot on the Mississippi. But Livy and I built our real home in Hartford, in the literary neighbourhood of Nook Farm, and moved in in 1874. It was a riot of a house — turrets, painted brick, porches like the decks of a steamboat. I called it the loveliest home that ever was. Our three girls, Susy, Clara and Jean, were taught in the schoolroom and put on plays in the library, and neighbours came over on Friday nights to play billiards. That billiard room on the top floor was my study: when I was revising, I laid the pages out across the table. Here I wrote Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee — the happiest and most productive years of my life. Bad investments forced us to Europe in 1891, and after we lost our Susy, who fell ill here while we were abroad, I could never bring myself to live in it again. The house is a museum now, and the billiard table is still in its place.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today