By the mid-nineteenth century, Boston had earned the nickname “The Athens of America”, as an important center for literature and as home to many of America's greatest writers. It was the launch pad of American Romanticism, Transcendentalism, the Fireside Poets, and American Realism. This literary tour, cosponsored by the Boston Literary District, highlights the homes and haunts of such prominent Victorians as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Henry James, Charles Dickens, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Individually, they were writers and poets without peer. Collectively, they made…