Big Fancy House / Literature

• Common in V. C. Andrews books, though they have more than their fair share of dark secrets.
  • Farthinggale Manor in the Casteel Series series. Tony proudly proclaims that each generation of the Tatterton family makes an effort to improve it. However when it is revisited in Gates of Paradise, it has fallen into ruin due to Tony's declining sanity.
  • Foxworth Hall in Flowers in the Attic and the majority of its sequels, so big that when the grandmother arranges to have the children locked away, she can lock up a whole wing just to make sure no one hears them.
  • My Sweet Audrina: Whitefern used to be this back when the family of the same name still had power, but by the time the story takes place it has been falling apart for years. Damian begins to have it repaired later in the book after getting more money from less-than-legal stockbroking practices.
• In Animorphs, the group breaks into the mansion of Joe Bob Fenestre, a near- Captain Ersatz of Bill Gates, who has a ton of security measures in it. It gets burned down in the end.
• Fowl Manor in the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland from Artemis Fowl. It's 200 acres.
• Aunt Dimity series:
  • Penford Hall, seat of the Duke of Penford in Aunt Dimity and the Duke.
  • Hailesham Park, the seat of the Earl of Elstyn and the setting for Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday.
  • Dundrillin Castle, Sir Percy's Scottish island retreat in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea.
• Jane Austen:
  • Emma:
    • Donwell Abbey is Mr. Knightley's family estate. It's very old, traditional, with gardens and orchards, a lime avenue, farms, and tenants renting the land. The house itself is huge and some of the rooms are furnished exquisitely.
    • Hartfield, which belongs to the Woodhouses. It's smaller than Donwell Abbey - just a "notch" in the estate - but it has a nice park, a farm attached, and it's modern and elegant, decorated and furnished with Emma's taste.
    • Escombe, large and rather secluded estate in the north of England, the seat of the snobby Churchills.
    • Maple Grove is a house with land bought by Mr Suckling, brother-in-law of Mrs Elton. She keeps gushing about the house, its parks, its gardens, servants, carriages... Must be lavish.
  • Mansfield Park:
    • Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram's titular mansion. It's quite grand with extensive property. Mrs. Norris still contrives to make Fanny's rooms in the attic cold and uncomfortable, though, until Sir Thomas finds out about it.
    • Mr. Rushworth is fabulously wealthy and his opulent family seat is called Sotherton. It has a huge house and large gardens and parks.
  • Northanger Abbey: The title location is a well-furnished, comfortable, with nicely updated decor despite the age of the building... this is rather disappointing to Catherine, who was expecting a haunted house to fulfill her Gothic inclinations.
  • Pride and Prejudice:
    • Pemberley, Mr. Darcy's seat. Curious, however, in that while by modern standards it's quite flashy, by the standards of the time while obviously massive and luxurious it's nevertheless quite a restrained and tasteful property, which is one of the things that indicates to Elizabeth Bennet that Mr. Darcy's Hidden Depths reveal him to be a more modest, humble and decent man than first impressions indicate.
    • Rosings Park, the home of his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh; in keeping with his aunt's overall foolishness, snobbery, and lack of decorum, it's a lot more gaudy and show-offy.
  • Sense and Sensibility:
    • The book opens at the Dashwood estate, Norland Park, which is a beautiful mansion in Devonshire; the late Mr. Dashwood's widow and daughters all love it and are sorry to leave it, especially since their stepson/half-brother's wife Fanny will impose her tastes upon it and do things like pull down the old trees to make room for a greenhouse.
    • Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters then remove to Barton Cottage, which is part of the property of Barton Park, home of Mrs. Dashwood's cousin; it's a massive estate with fields and woods, and Barton Park is a large and elegantly furnished manor.
    • One great house in the neighbourhood is Allenham Court, which belongs to Mrs Smith and Willoughby shall inherit it. He shows the house to Marianne and she finds the house charming.
    • Combe Magna, Willoughby's seat in Somersetshire. Characters never appear in the house so we don't know first hand, but it's supposed to be large and Willoughby is rather extravagant and lavish (and deep in debt), so it's safe to assume much money went into the house.
    • Elinor and Marianne later accompany Mrs. Jennings to her unnamed house in London, which is lavish and spacious.
    • The ladies visit the Palmers at their estate, Cleveland, which is yet another sprawling property with a Grecian temple on the grounds.
• Isaac Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man": The Martin family has a large residence due to Sir being a rich man working for the Regional Legislature.
• In the Blandings Castle series by P. G. Wodehouse, the titular house is, as the name hints, very large and home to a wide selection of characters.
• In Buddenbrooks, Thomas builds one, but later feels exhausted and regrets building such an expensive home. Even the house the family moves in later (after their downfall has become obvious) would probably qualify.
• The Bosses' mansions in Clocks that Don't Tick, which are made even more impressive by the fact they're built inside mountains. The one shown was said to include everything from the mercenary's quarters to swimming pools to indoor gold courses. The main level where the Bosses reside is made to resemble a luxury hotel with a courtyard. Said courtyard includes multiple hot tubs and golden fountains portraying Hope, her dress embedded with dozens of jewels. Above it all is a ceiling perfectly made to look like a starry sky. The mansion is also the only place shown that features futuristic technology appropriate for the novel's setting of five hundred years in the future. For example, there are holographic control panels that can be summoned by the Bosses making a certain gesture.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Rogues in the House", Nabonidus lives in one — which makes his lack of servants all the stranger.
• Discworld:
  • Sam Vimes's first impression of Sybil Ramkin's house in Guards! Guards! is that it takes up a surprising amount of a very expensive street, expecially once he learns that Lady Sybil only lives in three rooms (and the dragon pens in the back). Following their marriage and the birth of their first child, the nursery is reopened, but there's still a lot of empty space that would almost turn it into an Old, Dark House, except they just ignore the rooms they're not using, and keep the ones they do bright and cheerful.
  • The Ramkin country estate, Crundells, as seen in Snuff, is even larger, but better occupied — Sam only goes there once, which is the first time Sybil's been since she was a child, but there are a lot of servants who maintain the place just in case they do (the house in Ankh only seems to have a couple).
• In David Copperfield, the Steerforths live in one. Once James leaves, abandoning his mother, it becomes an Old, Dark House.
• The Family Tree Series has Luther—Abby's father—moves his family to one in the early 1930s after making enough money even during The Great Depression to move them from Lewisport to Barnegat Point—it has two bathrooms, a parlor, and enough rooms that everyone including the new baby can have their own room. Abby doesn't feel comfortable there, especially after her disabled brother Fred is sent away by Luther and her mother Nell dies. By the time Abby is an adult and has her own children, only Luther and his second wife Helen live there, with their servants. The house stands as a sign of Abby's estrangement from her father and his money—along with her children's and grandchildren's discomfort of visiting him—until Georgie's book, when after Helen's death (Luther died several years ago) it goes up for sale with most of the contents likely to be auctioned off. Abby does one last walkthrough, but at that point has been so separated from Luther and Helen there's nothing there she wants outside of closure.
• Hoffmann's house in The Fear Index is truly massive and costs around sixty million dollars. As Hoffmann is a recluse it's completely unnecessary but he bought it because that's what you do when you're rich.
• In The Final Reflection, Maxwell Grandisson III lives in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta — not as, say, a long-term guest in the penthouse suite, but as its owner and sole occupant (apart from his staff).
• In the Foundation novels, the Emperor of the Galaxy lives on a 100-acre palace on the capital world of Trantor. Noteworthy since the rest of the planet is completely covered in a series of metal domes.
• Brandham Hall in The Go-Between.
• The books Goneaway Lake and Return to Goneaway Lake are about a couple of kids finding an abandoned summer colony full of these.
• In The Good Earth, the rich family on the outskirts of the protagonist's home town and the rich family in the city both have this. The one in the city is so big that an entire tent city is spring up leaning on the wall around the estate.
• Jay Gatsby's mansion in The Great Gatsby, which is supposed to impress Daisy.
• The villain in The Gun Seller lives in a huge mansion with attached grounds within easy commuting distance of London - the protagonist mentally notes the vast wealth this implies.
• In the Harry Potter titles, the Malfoys live in an extravagant mansion and estate known as "Malfoy Manor." In the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it becomes home base for many of the Death Eaters.
• Hercule Poirot frequently provides his services as a detective to upper-class residents of big, fancy houses.
• In Honor Harrington, the eponymous heroine has acquired several through the course of the series. Harrington House on Grayson (which doubles as headquarters for the local government), her house on Manticore, her duchy on Gryphon, and her family's not-inconsiderable home on Sphinx.
• Hell Hall, the ancestral home of the de Vil family in The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
• Thornfield Hall, the Gothic estate of the wealthy Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre.
• A number of extravagant "old money" homes appear in the Jeeves and Wooster stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Their owners are frequently some relation to Wooster, who is a model Upper-Class Twit.
• The increasingly decrepit Hundreds Hall in Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger.
• Subverted in Malevil. The titular Malevil is a large English castle from The Hundred Years War, sitting on a cliff with accompanying grounds. Emmanuel is not a wealthy man, upper-middle-class at best, and nor was his uncle who left the inheritance he buys Malevil with. The property was sold "cheap" being considered a bad investment; the castle officially condemned and the grounds too unkempt to be worth the expense and hassle of restoration or clearing.
• Kyle in the Mercy Thompson books has one. While a Big Fancy House isn't a surprise when you're a successful divorce lawyer, Kyle's home also doubles as a shelter for his clients in cases involving Domestic Abuse, with all the creature comforts needed to distract the kids and state-of-the-art security systems in case angry husbands show up.
• Hillsglade House in Pact is a large, Victorian house on ample grounds in the middle of a medium-sized town in Eastern Canada. It has at least 4 floors and a large library. And as it is also the traditional estate of the Thorburn family, the local dynasty of demon summoners, that library is filled to the brim with tomes of forbidden knowledge. In general it's pretty foreboding for most making it also an example of a Dark Old House.
• Vanilla Créame's family live in a rich mansion in The Platinum Key books.
• Manderley, in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, is the Cornish country estate of the wealthy Englishman Maximilian de Winter. It features heirlooms, a full staff, and is open to the public on certain days.
• Darlington Hall, in The Remains of the Day.
• The Mouse World equivalent: in The Rescuers books, Miss Bianca is a pampered pet whose cage is a porcelain pagoda.
• The Roman Mysteries has the Villa Limona, an opulent Roman seaside house.
• The Wylers in the opening scene of The Scream.
• The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie is largely set in the big house that gives the novel its title.
• Downplayed in The Secret of Crickley Hall. While quite large, the semi-stately house's aesthetic is grimly functional.
• Misselthwaite Manor in The Secret Garden.
• In the Sherlock Holmes canon, Baskerville Hall is probably the most well-known example, but there are several instances of him visiting the sprawling country homes of the rich and powerful (and, occasionally, criminal).
• The Spear: A highly sinister variant in displaced Nazi Edward Gant's estate, whose rear section is modelled on Heinrich Himmler’s Wewelsburg fortress.
• Belle Rive in The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries is the most desirable address in Bon Temps. It's mentioned that there are many women in the town who would marry Andy Bellefleur just to be able to live there. His eventual wife Halleigh wants much more modest accommodations, though.
• Star Wars: Scoundrels: Avrak Villachor's house started life as a sector governor's mansion, an enormous K-shaped^* or aurek-shaped in the Star Wars Aurebesh alphabet building with multiple wings, suites, garages, and ballrooms. One of the ballrooms has been converted into Villachor's vault. The mansion sits on an estate so large Han mistakes it for a municipal park from the air; during the Festival of Four Honorings, the grounds play host to thousands of planet Wukkar's citizens on each of the four days. The goal of The Caper is to burgle the safe in the vault.
• In Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note, Wakatake's large house is surrounded by olive trees, something Aya awed about when she first see it in episode 5. In particular it has a very large library, of which during Wakatake's father's absence Wakatake uses it as the meeting spot for Detective Team KZ.
• When an Ugly becomes a Pretty in Uglies, they get moved from a dorm to a Big Fancy House.
• Homeward in J.P Martin's Uncle series. It's so big that the owner hasn't met a tenth of the people who also live there. It has a railway station that he didn't know about until the second book, and the most pimped out library possible, among countless other things.
• In Unforgiven by Lauren Kate Chloe lives in a big white mansion, filled with marble and surrounded by a moat with koi.
• There are a fair few in the Village Tales series, although they're all in the best of taste and rather restrained, really, dontcherknow. The Duke of Taunton, naturally, has several: Wolfdown House outside Wolfdown Abbas being his primary seat. His father wisely bought in the rectories and vicarages, to preserve them, during the Great C of E Fire Sale, so the Rector is as comfortably housed as is Sir Thomas Douty at Davill Court or the Salmons at Charltons or Teddy and Edmond at Chalkhills. The Mirzas and the patriarch of that family, HH the Nawab, have, like the Duke and all his titled relations, several all over the UK. And the Duke manages to claw back old Lord Mallerstang's ancestral hall for him – from the National Trust – when it becomes clear the Duke's nephew will be inheriting that title as well as the dukedom and Mallerstang wishes to leave the lad something.
• The Grosvenor Square mansion of the outrageously wealthy financier Augustus Melmotte in The Way We Live Now.
• Dennis Howl's house in Whale Music, although it's gone to seed and Dennis has become a hermit.
• The narrator of Who Moved My Soap lived in an 87,000 square foot mansion before his incarceration.
• The wealthy Mr. Toad, of The Wind in the Willows, lives in his family seat called Toad Hall.

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