Modeled after the famous Freedom Trail, Boston's new Literary Trail spans three hundred years and writers ranging from Cotton Mather to John Updike. In the nineteenth century, Boston was the cultural center, intellectual hub, and literary mecca of the United States. Among the heroes of this era were such household names as Louisa May Alcott, Thoreau, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Julia Ward Howe. The great arc linking Boston, Cambridge, and Concord was also the spawning ground for such giants of the modern era as Kahlil Gibran, Willa Cather, Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, Eugene O'Neill, e. e. cummings, and a remarkable number of others.

This unusual guidebook features lively snippets of the writers' own works along with short essays by well-known contemporary writers, including Julia Child on Fannie Farmer, David McCullough on Francis Parkman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on W.E.B. Du Bois, and Jane Langton on the "importance of whiskers."

The Literary Trail encompasses both walking and driving tours, the latter by car, public transportation, and Literary Tour buses. Among the landmarks "off the beaten path" are Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge (Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and many others), Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain (e. e. cummings and Anne Sexton), and Sleepy Hollow in Concord (Hawthorne, Emerson, and the Alcotts).