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This paper analyzes how the heritage value of writers’ houses from the seventeenth century, considered to be monuments, played a role in the institutional appreciation of “classic” writers and the “Siècle de Louis XIV” during the nineteenth century. It looks at how their heritage status has participated in the creation of the national myth and the “myth of literary history” based on the French universalist model that has underpinned the nationalization of literature since the seventeenth century. The regional embeddedness of the memory of classic writers such as Corneille, Racine, Molière, and La Fontaine during the nineteenth century explains why museums were founded in their names. It also explains why an ad hoc literature emerged at the end of the century, during the Third Republic, and especially after the defeat of Sedan (1870).