Dove Cottage, Grasmere is a unique cultural centre. As home to William Wordsworth and his family from 1799 to 1808, and Thomas De Quincey and his family from 1809 to 1835, it encompasses a rich literary history. In 1890 it became only the third writer's house in England to be preserved as a museum. As such, it also incorporates a rich history of literary tourism and museology, acting as a record of cultural and practical shifts in touristic and museological practices. Today, as a global tourist attraction, contemporary arts organisation, archive, scholarly resource, and heart of a community, it offers a distinctive combination of functions and meanings which memorialise and reiterate its past, at the same time as working to create its future. This thesis examines the processes through which the cottage the Wordsworth's rented in 1799 has been re-imagined into the cultural centre of the twenty-first century. It is concerned with how meaning is created around place through different media, comprising the writing and disseminating of various literatures (from poetry to tourist guides), the activities of dwelling in place and visiting place, and the re-presentation of place as museum or archive. In so-doing, it traces how the cottage has been re-imagined and re-presented at different points in its history, elucidating the Wordsworths' initiation of a mythos of home at Grasmere through their writings, which was repeated and augmented by De Quincey in his writings. These popular accounts of life at Dove Cottage created powerful impressions of the site as particularly inspirational, which .~~~------------- -- ---------.---=-~-~-~~~~-------- ii have been reiterated and propagated through its re-presentation as museum and cultural centre. This thesis argues that it is the activities enabled by the site's multiple functionality which continue to recreate Dove Cottage as cultural centre: as 'inspirational home'.