I keep dipping into Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Houses by Christina Hardyment. This was published by Oxford’s Bodleian Library so the novels are primarily by British authors. I bought the book purely on the basis of the charm promised by a chapter on Bilbo’s own BagEnd, but additional chapters cover discussion of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead and Mervyn Peak’s Gormenghast. . One of the things that perhaps disappoints is that there are not as many descriptive quotes from each of the books as one might have wished. The chapter on BagEnd includes the initial paragraph describing Bilbo’s comfortable Hobbit hole, but then veers off into biographical details of Tolkien’s life rather than discussing the handy pantries that any hospitable Hobbit would require in a home. Similarly, in discussing Mansfield Park, Hardyment doesn’t mention the nursery where Fanny Price is housed. There were such contrasts between the way Mrs Norris managed it (cheerless and fireless) compared with the comforts that Sir Thomas was willing to allow her. That nursery is the only place Fanny feels safe.

If there’s an oddness about this book, it is that the chapters tend to be more about the lives of the various authors and their attitudes than about the fictional houses created in their novels. That said, each chapter reveals new glimpses of what fueled the imagination of these writers. Equally engaging for the reader are the numerous color illustrations and photographs of jacket covers, authors, and occasionally specific rooms that provided inspiration for various settings.

The thing about books like this is they tend to be left quietly on the shelf as a sort of reference book, the kind one only dips into occasionally. There is a chronological order imposed as an organizational approach but the chapters don’t otherwise need to be read in any linear fashion. So where the chapter covering works by Vita Sackville-West might be skipped in one mood, in another mood, you can read it at another point and feel inspired to learn more about Knole, the country house appearing in [The Edwardians]. (Used copies of that novel as well as Sackville-West’s history of Knole are now en route to me.)

From a personal perspective, I don’t share the author’s fondness for [Cold Comfort Farm] and I don’t quite follow the logic that the author used when she decided to include [Uncle Tom’s Cabin] in this collection – the only American title selected. Ostensibly, Stowe’s novel provides an example of a Christian household at risk but Hardymen might just as readily substituted Hiram’s Hospital from Trollope’s [The Warden]. That novel (from roughly the same period) also hinges on ethical consideration of those living on the edge.

Still, as a whole, the book is a pleasant means of touring homes (large and small) that live in our memories. ( )