Writers’ houses are sites that are invariably associated with the production of literature. Besides being a product of a writer's imagination or ambition, the house may also be a source of inspiration in its own right, or a material frame for the generation of writing. Just as these houses are shaped by writers, they in turn shape the writers dwelling in them. Harald Hendrix suggests that a writer's house might be seen as an ‘archive’ which documents a person's intellectual and emotional biography.

A writer's house may become a ‘machine’ to remember the former literary resident but also to generate new imaginings. It can tell us about the now absent writer and the intentions of those who have turned it into a living memorial. Writers are rarely in a position to begin this process themselves, aside from rare exceptions therefore it is usually other agents who intervene. Inevitably, the aspects of the author's biography that commemorators wish to emphasise go a long way towards determining the meanings these houses may convey to those who visit them.

Alison Booth observes, ‘The very openness of the author's house to the public is a proof of that author's absence’. In this chapter, I will consider the preserved houses of Katharine Susannah Prichard in Greenmount Western Australia and Eleanor Dark in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Through their operation as writers’ centres, the former homes of Prichard and Dark now encourage ongoing literary creativity. Dark would probably not have allowed tourists to come through their house while she was in residence but many writers and artists visited Prichard at Greenmount. Nevertheless, both writers were very vocal in their support of fellow authors, as evidenced by their membership of the Fellowship of Australian Writers.

Prichard and Dark knew each other and were colleagues and correspondents: a photo from the collection of the National Library of Australia shows them sitting on the front verandah of Prichard's Greenmount house together. Both women have been commemorated through ‘living memorials’, which are houses where writers may pursue their writing in a supportive environment away from the demands of domestic life. Mark O'Flynn has described Varuna as a ‘living, breathing home’ (which implies that some houses are ‘dead’).