Writers often turn to their personal lives to draw inspiration for their stories, and locations seem to have a powerful pull. From the quaint Canadian cottage that inspired Anne of Green Gables to the sprawling New York estate said to have been the inspiration behind Gatsby's infamous mansion, click or scroll on as we step inside the hallowed homes behind some of the world's most treasured books...
This Gold Coast compound is every bit as ritzy in real life as the fictional abode of the legendary Jay Gatsby that it supposedly inspired. Known as Kings Landing, the home is situated on eight acres of waterfront in an area of north Long Island called Kings Point, where F. Scott Fitzgerald once lived.
The glamorous neighbourhood packed with glitzy mansions is believed to have inspired the fictional enclave of West Egg, where The Great Gatsby is set.
While the home did not actually exist at the time when Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, which was published in 1925, it is representative of the style of so many other homes in the neighbourhood which did, and which would easily have inspired Jay Gatsby’s infamously opulent residence.
Each room is decorated with jaw-dropping grandeur and architectural details such as stained-glass ceilings, mosaic tiling and inlaid marble floors can be found throughout the home. There are also plenty of oversized windows which offer panoramic views of the stunning grounds.
In the book, the narrator Nick Carraway spends hours staring across the water towards his first love Daisy Buchanan's house and there are many party scenes set in Jay Gatsby's lavish formal gardens on the grounds of his mansion.
These gardens could have been lifted directly from the pages, complete with manicured lawns, immaculate planting and fountains leading to the water's edge. There's also a tennis court, indoor and outdoor pools, a water slide, a 200-foot dock and two auxiliary buildings designed for use as staff quarters.
The spectacular estate, which was last listed for sale in 2023 for a hefty £35.8 million ($45m), was built in 1928 and boasts 18 bedrooms, 28 bathrooms, five storeys and 60,000 square feet of living space, more than the White House.
In addition to its standard reception rooms, this home is also constructed for entertaining on a Gatsby-like scale. This includes luxurious amenities such as an indoor water park, a casino, a bowling alley, an arcade, a salon, a sauna and steam room, a glass elevator, multiple ballrooms, wine cellars, spas, and garages.
Originally known as Fort House, this striking coastal home in Broadstairs, Kent, was once the summer retreat of literary giant Charles Dickens. The celebrated author holidayed here from the 1830s to the 50s, finding inspiration in the property's unique aesthetic...
The fortress-like property towers above the ocean, offering uninterrupted views over Kent's Viking Bay. As well as penning the illustrious David Copperfield here, the summer home is said to have inspired the creation of one of Dickens' most celebrated literary works, Bleak House.
Many have drawn comparisons between the Broadstairs property and John Jarndyce’s iconic home, as depicted in Dickens’ writing: “It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice windows.”
Following a fire in 2006, the home is now a bed and breakfast, where you can walk the very hallways that Dickens himself once meandered. In 1853, Fort House was renamed Bleak House in honour of one of the best-loved novels of the 19th century and to pay respects to the author.
Great Maytham Hall near Rolvenden, Kent, is the former home of Frances Hodgson Burnett, an American novelist and playwright. Burnett rented this enthralling Grade II-listed country manor for 10 years exploring the 18 beautiful acres of manicured gardens, the ideal setting for a magical children's story.
The property’s pretty kitchen garden ignited an idea in Burnett’s mind. While exploring the grounds one day, the author stumbled upon a wrought-iron gate hidden behind some vines. The entrance led to a secluded walled garden, thus planting the seed for one of the writer's most celebrated works.
Although in the book Misselthwaite Manor is located in Yorkshire, semblances between fiction and reality are clear: “The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in, no one knew where she was.”
Sadly Frances’ original secret gate was bricked up during a renovation of the garden in the 1910s, but you can visit the new one, which is every bit as beautiful. To this day, the house itself (which is not open to the public) remains home to numerous residents, offering private luxury apartments in a quiet oasis in the heart of the Garden of England. We'd love to call this place home!
The prognostic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was inspired by many things, including George Orwell's crippling tuberculosis. Yet one location, in particular, became Orwell's main muse.
Ironically, this remote farmhouse on the quiet Scottish island of Jura was the place where Orwell created the Thought Police and Big Brother, for one of his greatest literary achievements. In stark contrast to the themes of the novel, this isolated property fed Orwell's wild imagination.
Set in the Inner Hebrides, Barnhill was, and still is, almost entirely off-grid. From his desk by the window, Orwell looked out over the deserted landscape and imagined a world with no privacy or freedom. Here, he penned the entirety of his dystopian classic.
Fiercely private and wanting to maintain the home's tranquil beauty, Orwell was said to have shouted "cannibals" at anyone caught trespassing near his gate.
Remaining virtually untouched ever since, the home is still owned by the same family who rented the property to Orwell some 70 years ago. And although you can no longer stay at the house, The Orwell Society arranges trips to the home every one to two years according to The Guardian.
In 1908, L.M. Montgomery published her most famous work, Anne of Green Gables; a story said to be inspired by her own rural childhood in Canada.
Located on Canada's idyllic Prince Edward Island, it’s easy to see how Montgomery took inspiration from this stunning rural farmhouse. The ideal setting for a charming children’s tale, the property became the centre piece of Anne Shirley's world.
Montgomery lived in the stunning coastal cottage in the late 1800s and from here, penned much of the Anne of Green Gables series. Now a dedicated heritage museum, you can explore the rooms and gardens that influenced Montgomery's iconic children's stories.
Those who visit this iconic property can step straight into Anne Shirley's world and explore famed locations from the novel, including Haunted Woods and Balsam Hollow: “I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness.”
Little House on the Prairie epitomises rural American life in the late 19th century and was inspired by the pioneer lifestyle of its author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Constantly on the move, a whole host of Midwest homes influenced the iconic series. This is a replica of Wilder's birthplace in Wisconsin, as described in Little House in the Big Woods.
In 1880, 13-year-old Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family moved to this cabin in South Dakota, fictionalised in the fifth book in the Little House series, By the Shores of Silver Lake. Her father, Charles, built the small shanty homestead himself, lured to the location by the plentiful supply of water.
Now with a husband and young daughter, Laura Ingalls Wilder moved to Mansfield, Missouri in 1894. The family cultivated 200 sprawling acres of farmland, and eventually built a farmhouse, called Rocky Ridge Farm on the plot. It was here that Wilder began committing the Little House series to paper.
This stunning historic property in the heart of the Peak District National Park was a major influence on Charlotte Brontë, who visited the home several times in 1845. Known as North Lees Hall, the building became the inspiration for Thornfield Hall, the iconic residence of Edward Rochester in Brontë’s most enduring novel, Jane Eyre.
Surrounded by the stunning rolling hills of the Peak District National Park, North Lees Hall beautifully captured the solitude of country life in England during the 19th century. In the book, Brontë describes the hall quite suitably: “three storeys high; a gentleman’s manor house; battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look”.
Though not open to the public, this enchanting property is a truly captivating piece of literary history. The author even named her acclaimed novel after North Lees Hall's architect, Robert Eyre.
A further grand Yorkshire property that is said to have inspired Charlotte Brontë's timeless novel, Norton Conyers was visited numerous times by the author in 1839, some eight years before the book was published. Brontë had heard stories about a mad woman confined to the building’s eerie attic, a tale that is thought to have inspired her infamous character, Bertha Mason.
Beyond its connection to a beloved novel, Norton Conyers is a Grade II-listed property, recognised as having 'special interest' to the United Kingdom. Two kings, Charles I and James II, both spent the night here, and many of its 18th-century furnishings, including paintings, have been well-maintained.
In 2004, a hidden stairway was discovered at Norton Conyers, further linking the historic property to Thornfield Hall. The attic remains intact to this day, though there is no public access to the space, which helped create one of the greatest literary twists of all time.
After an extensive renovation, the house and gardens will be reopening to the public in the spring of 2024, allowing guests to stroll through one of the most famous landmarks in literary history.
When you take a look at the chocolate-box childhood home of Beatrix Potter, it's easy to see where the inspiration for her most iconic character was born...
That's right, the beautiful gardens and surrounding landscape of Beatrix Potter's former home were the main inspiration for the adventures of mischievous Peter Rabbit.
It's easy to imagine mischievous Peter hopping around this quaint English garden, and you can almost see Beatrix Potter herself, sitting by her window watching the animals play outside.
Known as Hill Top, this quintessentially English property in the heart of the Lake District is now owned by the National Trust and is open for visits by fond fans, eager to see the dwelling that inspired some of literature's best-loved characters.
Located in historic Edinburgh, Scotland, it's easy to see how this dramatic castle-like property ignited an idea in the mind of J. K. Rowling. Though not technically a home, this grand building was designed by Renaissance architect William Wallace in the mid-1600s. Initially opened as a hospital, the building is now home to the prestigious George Heriot's School.
Founded by Heriot, who had no children of his own, the school was set up to help families similar to his own, the children of deceased tradesmen facing hardship, with funds coming from the majority of Heriot's fortune, worth tens of millions today.
J. K. Rowling is rumoured to have taken inspiration from the property's dominant turrets and towers for her famed fictional institution, Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: "A huge, rambling, quite scary-looking castle, with a jumble of towers and battlements.
Speaking in 2002, Rowling said: "Hogwarts is a very real place to me... I've always imagined it to be in Scotland... which... it was never made explicit in the books but the British reader will know that because if you do travel for a day from King's Cross Station in London and you go north, you end up in Scotland. So it was always supposed to be here."
Fans have enjoyed finding similarities between George Heriots and Hogwarts, delighting in the four houses the boys would have been sorted into: Lauriston is Slytherin; Greyfriars represents Hufflepuff; Raeburn is Gryffindor, named after a famous former pupil Sir Henry Raeburn who was an acclaimed portrait painter; and Castle stands as Ravenclaw.
By night the building is hauntingly magical, commanding the landscape in the same way that Hogwarts is said to in Rowling's adored Harry Potter series.
Author E.M.Forster lived in this attractive Grade I-listed home, called Rooks Nest House, between the ages of four and 14. His love for the property inspired what many believe to be the writer's literary masterpiece.
Although film adaptations were shot on location at a beautiful old home known as Peppard Cottage in Oxfordshire, England, it is this home that Forster drew inspiration from.
Forster adored the rolling countryside that surrounded the home, taking inspiration for his work from the idyllic landscape of his childhood. The 16th-century house was said to be simple and unpretentious in Forster’s time, with no running water, gas or electricity.
Previously known as Howards, the property is mentioned several times in Forster's novel, and its title even named after this stunning country house. Perhaps a sign of how much he admired his former home, Mrs. Wilcox's house is the only solid and reliable thing in the book: it's said to be the plot piece that ties the novel together.
Dating back to the Tudor period, the property still boasts lovely formal gardens and idyllic landscape vistas, still intact from when Forster lived there almost 140 years ago. It is also worth its literary gold, quite literally, coming to market in 2017 for £1.5 million ($1.9m).
Writing in a biography of his aunt, Forster spoke of the house fondly: "From the time I entered the house at the age of four and nearly fell from its top to its bottom through a hole ascribed to the mice, I took it to my heart and hoped, as Marianne had of Battersea Rise, that I should live and die there." Let's hope the new owners feel the same way.
With a name like Frankenstein’s Castle, it’s no mystery which famous gothic horror novel this imposing edifice inspired. The abandoned castle dates to the 1600s, and with its dramatic turrets and crumbling ramparts, would certainly make an appropriate backdrop for a historical thriller.
The castle was formerly owned by Johann Konrad Dippel, a noted alchemist who was born in the Burg of Frankenstein in 1673, and was rumoured to conduct gruesome electrical experiments and concoct strange potions. Dippel is believed to have inspired Shelley’s 1818 novel, which similarly features a ‘mad scientist’ conducting a desperate experiment to reproduce human life.
Nestled in the mountains of Mühltal, Hesse, the castle is now abandoned and decaying, with its semi-exposed interior at the mercy of the elements. However, with its two towers, chapel and restaurant still intact, the site remains a popular tourist attraction.
As one might imagine, Castle Frankenstein is a particularly hot destination around Halloween, when the Burg Frankenstein Halloween party attracts visitors dressed as ghosts, vampires, werewolves and witches for various spooky-themed events.
This historic estate on the coast of Cornwall has been the family seat of the Rashleighs since the 16th century. Known as Menabilly, the Grade II-listed country house is believed to have been the inspiration behind Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, Rebecca.
Like Manderley, Menabilly is set back in the woods, near the sea but not visible from the shore. The remote setting provided ample opportunity for the haunting encounters which dominate the gothic novel.
Du Maurier, pictured here in the home, had long coveted Menabilly, which is a sprawling stone structure in the Georgian style. However, it was not until 1943, five years after she penned Rebecca, that du Maurier became the new tenant of what was by then a very dilapidated and neglected building.
Du Maurier set about lovingly restoring the home before returning it to the Rashleighs at the end of her tenancy in 1969. Today, the majority of the house and grounds remain under private ownership, although three cottages on the estate are available as holiday lets.
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