Providence by the Book: A Literary Walking Tour

"...the slanting sunlight touches the Market House and the ancient hill roofs and belfries with gold, and throws magic around the dreaming wharves...After a long look he would grow almost dizzy with a poet's love for the sight..." H.P. Lovecraft- one of the most significant supernatural horror fiction authors of the 20th century- wrote these words about his hometown of Providence. This tour discovers the author's traumatic upbringing, racism, and favorite haunts; guests also meet some of the fictional characters that Lovecraft wrote into the city's fabric. But Lovecraft isn't the only famous author that ambled the city's centuries-old sidewalks: Sarah Helen Whitman, the poet who was briefly engaged to Edgar Allan Poe, also called the Creative Capital home. This tour explores her life and relives the couple's whirlwind- and doomed- romance.