Stay at the homes of iconic authors like Emily Dickinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudyard Kipling and more 

If you're a bibliophile, you likely aren't a stranger to sites of America's most famous writers during your travels. From Ernest Hemingway's home in Key West, Florida, to Edith Wharton's mansion in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, wandering through these houses and wondering what these walls have seen is part of the allure of literary tourism.

It's why we detour down an Appalachian road to see where Pearl S. Buck was born, why we swim in Walden Pond or sit on the steps of Langston Hughes's Harlem brownstone. Some of these homes are now museums, but rarely can travelers sit alone where writers worked or gazed out on the landscapes that inspired them.

Here's where you can check in, and maybe by the morning, feel a little closer to literary genius.

W.E.B. Du Bois, Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson at Hotel Chelsea in New York City

This iconic Manhattan landmark is synonymous with bohemian New York City. For more than 100 years, the Chelsea operated as a residence hotel and was home to writers including W.E.B. Du Bois, Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson. Today's iteration of the Hotel Chelsea is more upscale luxury than downtown residence, but the hotel retains echoes of its former self.

First opened in 1884, the Victorian Gothic building underwent a top-to-bottom renovation and quietly reopened as a fully functioning hotel in 2022. A lot has changed, but the modern hotel is an ode to nostalgia. An overnight stay here means sleeping in the space that housed some of the greatest literary talent in recent history. Ask the concierge for a guide to where these writers and other slept — Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Dylan Thomas and Simone de Beauvoir.

Emily Dickinson's solitary bedroom in Amherst, Massachusetts

The poet Emily Dickinson dressed only in white and self-exiled in her family's home in Amherst, Massachusetts, writing nearly all of her 1,800 poems in her upstairs bedroom. Since 2017, admirers of Dickinson can get a little closer to the poet, thanks to "Studio Sessions" at the Emily Dickinson Museum, which allows visitors spend a solitary hour in her bedroom, starting at $300.

"Emily Dickinson has meant something very, very personal to them. They come to immerse themselves fully in that connection," Jane Wald, executive director of the museum, said of visitors.

Wald said people use the time to work on their own projects or to simply reflect.

Rudyard Kipling's Vermont estate in Dummerston, Vermont

Rudyard Kipling, author of "The Jungle Book," was born in India but made his home for a time in rural Vermont. Naulakha, which Kipling named for the Naulakha Pavilion in Lahore, Pakistan, is now a National Historic Landmark and operates as a vacation rental by the Landmark Trust USA.

Built for Kipling and his wife in 1892, the home sat abandoned, yet fully furnished, with many of the Kiplings' possessions, for 50 years. When the trust acquired the home in the 1990s, it was in a state of near-ruin with a leaking roof and full-time raccoon residents. Naulakha's restoration was meticulous and today many of Kipling's original furniture remains, including the desk where he wrote "The Jungle Book," "Captains Courageous" and "Just So Stories."

Naulakha was constructed in the style of a ship, resembling something between a Kashmiri houseboat and a Mississippi riverboat. The home sleeps up to eight and rents for about $600 a night.

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald's post-Paris home in Montgomery, Alabama

This house looks so much a part of the suburban southern landscape of Montgomery's Old Cloverdale neighborhood that you would be forgiven for missing the sign that a literary golden couple resided here from 1931 to 1932.

It was here, in the town where they met , that the Fitzgeralds retreated after their years in Paris and the French Riviera. Although the Fitzgeralds only called this house home briefly, it was where Scott penned his novel "Tender is the Night" and where Zelda worked on "Save Me the Waltz."

Saved from demolition in the late 1980s, the house became the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum. Today, the museum rents out upstairs rooms on Airbnb. For rates beginning at $95 and up, guests can spend a night in either the F. Scott Suite or the Zelda Suite — once their private bedrooms.

Hunter S. Thompson's cabin in Woody Creek, Colorado

Decades after Hunter S. Thompson's death, fans of the author still make the pilgrimage to Owl Farm about a half-hour from Aspen, Colorado, even if to just catch a glimpse of the private 40-acre estate.

Wishing to share something of Hunter's legacy and his world, his widow, Anita Thompson, opened Hunter's writing cabin in 2018 for overnight guests willing to fill out a lengthy application and go through a light background check.

"I loved to hear about how Hunter changed their life," she said

Today guests can apply to stay if they are recommended by someone who has already stayed, but they should be prepared to be patient: The wait list is over a year long. Thompson is converting the main house at Owl Farm, where her husband did much of his work, into a residency for writers and musicians.

Willa Cather's childhood home in Red Cloud, Nebraska

Decades before the "My Ántonia" author settled in New York City with her longtime partner Edith Lewis, she spent a formative youth in the small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska. It was her childhood in Red Cloud and time spent on the prairies of the state that would come to define her writing. She describes the home in her novel "The Song of the Lark" and in her short stories "The Best Years" and "Old Mrs. Harris." Now, after a nearly yearlong renovation, Cather's childhood home has reopened to the public. Open to overnight guests, the 140-year-old home is stocked with items from the family's years there. Fans of Cather's writing, or those traveling through, can book the six-bedroom home on Airbnb for about $140 a night.