You could be living next door to the building where your favorite book was written and not even know it.
A new free audio tour gives literature-loving New Yorkers a glimpse of where some of the city’s most famous authors lived and wrote. Here is our CliffsNotes-like preview of the tour, which comes from publisher HarperCollins (part of News Corp., which also owns The Post), marking its 200th anniversary this year. Find it at HarperCollins200AudioTour.com. And feel free to stop at your local bookstore when you’re done.
Harper Lee
433 E. 82nd St.
In 1949, the “To Kill A Mockingbird” author was just another aspiring novelist when she moved from her Monroeville, Ala., home to Manhattan. She worked as an airline reservation agent for a time, settling on East 82nd Street. Her first apartment was demolished in 1967, and the loyal Mets fan moved across the street to 433. Despite her great literary accomplishment, Lee fiercely guarded her privacy and lived in the apartment for 40 years (she move back home in 2007 after a stroke but kept the lease till her death last year at 89).
Maurice Sendak
29 W. Ninth St.
The wild things are, apparently, in the West Village. For much of the 1960s, a middle-aged Sendak lived in a duplex apartment that was, weirdly, once owned by the dentist who pioneered the technique of crafting artificial teeth out of vulcanite. The writer and illustrator was a lifelong New Yorker, born in Brooklyn in 1928. But his Greenwich Village home was built in 1854 and originally had a lovely Italian-looking facade. It has since been remodeled, wiping away much of its character. Sendak lived on the first and basement floors — perfect for his Sealyham terrier, Jennie.
Mark Twain
14 W. 10th St.
When Samuel Clemens (pen name: Mark Twain) moved three blocks away from Washington Square Park in 1900, the 64-year-old writer was already considerably wealthy and revered. His “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was published in 1876, and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” came in 1884. So 16 years later, Clemens was a true literary celebrity. Naturally, he picked a mighty nice house in a mighty nice neighborhood. Unfortunately, his rabid urban fans overwhelmed Clemens’ health, and his family hightailed it to Riverdale in the Bronx for some peace and quiet. The West 10th Street home would later be infamously dubbed “The House of Death,” because 22 deaths occurred there in the ensuing years.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
75½ Bedford St.
Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay lived in what is the narrowest house in New York City. It was built atop a 19th-century alleyway, and its exterior width is 9½ feet. Inside, it becomes as thin as 2 feet. Cartoonist William Steig and actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant all lived there over the years. Millay’s relatively short stay lasted from 1923 to 1924.
Richard Wright
101 and 89 Lefferts Place, Brooklyn
Novelist Richard Wright may not be a native son of Brooklyn, but he settled in the borough in 1937. Wright lived on this working-class street, squeezed into an 1890s row house with his friends, the Newton family. There, at 101, he finished “Native Son” in 1939. His roommates and neighbors stayed up all night drinking and reading the completed manuscript aloud. Later, he moved to 89 Lefferts Place with his own wife and child.