As a fan of books by Austen, Bronte, and co, I found this book to be super fascinating.

Lovingly rendered exploration of the house and its place in some Very Important English Literature. Now, I didn't really enjoy this as much as I wanted to BUT a social/historical exploration of this kind is, to me, a very personal itch to scratch. The reader will likely linger over those houses that feature in her or his favorites novels - like, talk to me about Rebecca and Agatha Christie and spare me the Jane Eyre, for God's sake. Anyway, a worthy read.

House of Fiction is a perfect way to delve back into beloved books. I thought it was very well written and very engrossing - especially for the books I did read. I could picture the houses I had imagined and the characters populating them. I found it difficult to follow on the chapters about books I had not read though. What is wonderful about this book is how it mixes both the fictional world of the books with the real life inspiration from the authors. A great read for those who love literature.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to finish this book before it was archived. But, from what I did read, this is a very detailed book that would make a great gift for any fan of classic literature.

Thank you to NetGalley, Phyllis Richardson, and Unbound for the ARC of The House of Fiction. I found this book very enjoyable and will recommend it to fellow lit lovers.

Interesting reflection on the impact of place on some of the better known authors of the Western canon. Suitable for academic libraries

Write what you know" is a favorite aphorism of writing teachers. In this book Richardson offers a look at the places that influenced various British writers as they penned some of their most famous tales. The book offers a biographical look at the authors, brief synopses of the books for those who are unfamiliar with them, and analysis about what these structures tell us about the socioeconomic status of the writers and their characters.

Phyllis Richardson is the author of several books on architecture and design, and in this, her latest compendium, she writes knowledgeably about the great fictional British houses we have come to know intimately over the last four hundred or so years. She also scrutinizes the actual bricks and mortar structures that inspired many well-known novelists to create their most memorable stories.

What do people's homes (grand or otherwise) say about their characters, wealth and standing in society? Writers have repeatedly posed these questions in their works of fiction, and their observations have rarely failed to engage the reader's imagination.

Richardson highlights the layout, location and other more intimate aspects of these houses in some detail – no dingy niche, winding staircase or flying buttress is left unexamined. She is particularly good on the dwellings behind Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Her chapter on Charles Dickens rediscovering Gad's Hill Place while on the road to Rochester, and gloomy Satis House, the Gothic pile he dreamt up for Miss Havisham in Great Expectations is exceptionally good. Facts such as Virginia Woolf basing Orlando on Vita Sackville-West and her family's great Tudor home, Knole, were well-known to me, while others, like Thomas Hardy designing his own writer's residence, less so.

Some chronicles are inevitably more interesting than others (your favourites are likely to be determined by your taste in reading), and I found myself skimming over certain architectural details. There are, however, fascinating descriptions of Groby Hall, the inspiration behind Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End; Menabilly, Daphne du Maurier's beloved home, on which Manderley from Rebecca was based; and the numerous settings used by Agatha Christie in her popular crime fiction novels. In fact, there is plenty here to interest most, if not all, lovers of literature.

Houses of Fiction can be perused at leisure or read in several sittings. Either way, it is entertaining, often witty and well worth your time. (3.5 Stars)

NB This book was funded directly by readers through the website Unbound.

A well researched chronicle of famous literary authors' abodes but the premise gets a bit diluted with minutiae and the style skews more towards an academic work of non fiction.

This is a really interesting book which was a pleasure to read. This is a history of houses that have been used in books. The setting adds a lot to the atmosphere and enjoyment of a book. There has obviously been a lot of research done to write this book. It was great to be able to read about the history of these houses and the authors of some of my favourite books.

A thoroughly entertaining and engaging exploration of the most iconic literary houses in fiction and real life. As much a social and cultural history as a purely literary one, there’s much to discover her and it’s a book to refer to again and again whilst reading the many books and authors featured here. I was hooked from page one and read it straight through, but it’s equally a book that can be read a bit at a time. It’s well written, thoroughly researched and has a good selection of images. A book for all bibliophiles.

One interesting essay about the most famous mansion in Literature, some of which became characters in itself. Very interesting but I would recommend not to read it all in one Session.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

This is an entertaining exploration of the house in British fiction, operating at the intersections of biography and social history. Richardson takes a chronological view of great fictional houses from Shandy Hall ([book:Tristram Shandy|76527]) to the Tallis family home in [book:Atonement|9961].

En route, we travel through the gothic property which inspired and paralleled Walpole's [book:The Castle of Otranto|3468331], the great houses to which Austen's heroines aspire, the haunted passageways of Bronte fiction, to the cottages of Hardy. 'Popular' literature gets a look in with a chapter on du Maurier's Manderley and the settings for many of Agatha Christie's ingenious crimes; and no book on this topic would be complete without a look at Brideshead. Modern houses such as the contested avant-garde Robin Hill of Galsworthy moves the story on and we end with thinking about the urban environment which serves as a backdrop to the stories of e.g. J.G.Ballard.

Richardson's interests in architecture and building inform this study throughout and combine with biographies of the authors, tracing the real-life houses which often inspire their fictional counterparts. There's enough story-telling here to make sure you don't have to have read the books to make sense of this narrative (though obviously it helps).

What this isn't is an analysis of what houses and the spaces they provide might mean within the context of the novels which contain them. An engaging review, then, of the role played by houses in British literature, and an appealing way of focusing social history via the literary house and its real-life relations.

Thanks to Unbound for an ARC via NetGalley.