Nine illustrious houses in fiction

Elizabeth Wilhide is the author of the novel Ashenden, whose title "character" is also a house. Ashenden Park is based on Basildon Park, the Berkshire stately home that featured as Netherfield Hall in the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

For The Daily Beast, Wilhide came up with nine illustrious houses in fiction, including:

West Egg

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” Gatsby’s ostentatious pile in West Egg is “a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.” Like Gatsby, the mansion has a bogus, fictional past. It’s also a lure with which to tempt Daisy, who lives with her husband Tom Buchanan across the bay in a red-and-white Colonial house that speaks of old money and taste.

Learn about another entry on the list.

The Great Gatsby appears among Suzette Field's top ten literary party hosts, Robert McCrums's ten best closing lines in literature, Molly Driscoll's ten best literary lessons about love, Jim Lehrer's six favorite 20th century novels, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best clocks in literature and ten of the best misdirected messages, Tad Friend's seven best novels about WASPs, Kate Atkinson's top ten novels, Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition, Robert McCrum's top ten books for Obama officials, Jackie Collins' six best books, and John Krasinski's six best books, and is on the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels.

--Marshal Zeringue