Mark Twain’s Famous Former Redding Home Dubbed Stormfield Just Listed

Mark Twain’s final address, a Tuscan-style villa in Connecticut where he lived until his passing, just hit the market asking $4.2 million.

Built for the author in 1908, two years before his death, the mansion stands in pastoral Redding. Quieter and less flashy than its Fairfield County neighbors, the town embraces a low density and closeness to nature (Huntington State Park lies just a ten-minute drive away) that surely appealed to Twain. The house was rebuilt in 1925 after a fire, but it still nods to the author today. Touches of a writers’ taste remain in the library, the bookshelves of which line every wall and climb all the way to the ceiling, stuffed profusely with literature. The adjoining formal living room sits under a hand-painted coffered ceiling.

Known as Stormfield, named by Twain after his short story “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”, the estate takes its inspiration from the writer’s appreciation for Italy. Encompassing 28.53 acres and bordering 161 acres of Redding Land Trust, Stormfield’s enormity is difficult to overstate. The main house, too, enjoys expansiveness with 4 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms within 6,300 square feet. A pool house and caretaker’s cottage with 2 additional bedrooms also find space on the grounds.

As buyers might too feel when they first experience it, Twain was in awe. According to listing agent Laura Freed Ancona of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, upon looking out to the land from his new home, the writer stated, “How beautiful it all is. I did not think it could be as beautiful as this.”

It’s fitting that the street on which the estate lies has been dubbed Mark Twain Lane, a little poem worthy of the man.