when postcards show poet's homes...

will, over at the journey round my skull blog, has recently done a few postings on "photochrom" postcards from the collection of the ny public library. most of these cards are beautiful, relatively inexpensive and easy to find.

one of the cards that really struck a chord with me was an image of the doorway and stairs to a country house owned by the poet henry wadsworth longfellow. of course, i wanted to see in person and hold it in my hands, so i let my fingers walk on over to ebay to see if i could find one for a buck or two (i did, and will post them on friday)...

fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you feel about this week's postings, i also ended up finding a huge lot of postcards from portland maine, which included nearly 75 images related to longfellow, spanning the early years of postcard production to the early 1960's for only $10, so of course i bought it, hoping to find some variations of the coveted doorway image.

unfortunately, there were no images of the doorway, and a lot of the individual cards were relatively uninteresting until i realized that the repetition of three sites over time was quite extraordinary.

so today i begin a week of a five posts related to images related to longfellow with images of the house he was born in. you can check the wikipedia link if you want any info on him, and if you do, please note that the image they have of his birthplace is from one of these cards. they are pictured here in intuitive chronological order of publication.

i'm certain that there are even more variations on these, but i am hoping that if i post them now, i will NOT continue to seek more... time will tell...