Quite some digs! No wonder they wrote so well! (Tongue in cheek here.)

If you have a spare moment, you might also google 'Neil Gaiman's house' and particularly his library - he has said in interviews that he actually bought the house because it was big enough for his books. And it looks just like a house he would live in, if you have read any of his work.

Lots of really nice houses there. Mostly too big for my personal tastes. Mark Twain's had some appealing details, but too big and too dark.

Neil Gaiman has the right idea - for me the library is one of the most important rooms in the house. If I were designing a house it would have a big library (with fireplace and window seat), a nice eat-in kitchen, a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms, and a really great laundry/utility room with airy space to hang laundry indoors when it is raining outside. Oh yes, and a wonderful front porch.

Here is a link that might be useful: Neil Gaiman's library

I like Edith Wharton's. If you got tired of all the rooms, you could spend quite a lot of time in the garden! I would want a full-time gardener, of course.

My husband and I toured the Hemingway house in Key West once. It was quite interesting; but, dessert fiend that I am, what I remember best about that trip is the Key Lime Pie.

I liked the scale of houses that belonged to Eudora Welty and Kurt Vonnegut, but Edith Wharton's house is my favorite. You'd need an army of gardeners, that's for sure!

I've been to the Twain house and it's really quite interesting, and not as dark as you might imagine.

Rosefolly, thanks for the link to the Gaiman library. I'd LOVE a room like that. I'd like to see the rest of the house, too. I occasionally read his blog, and for Christmas one year his children gave him a Lamp Post, which he had installed in the woods near his home just like The Chronicles of Narnia.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lantern Waste

Victor Hugo - Guernsey, U.K. island. ... a beautiful house, in a beautiful setting, on a beautiful island -- what could be better? I wonder why it said "his exile home" ... Does anyone know?

I'll take that house on the Amalfi Coast if no one else wants it.

I've also been to the Twain house. It's not in a neighborhood where you would want to live, although quite interesting (the house, not the 'hood).

I've visited Shakespeare's birthplace and am sure it is much grander than it would have been in Tudor times, that is assuming it actually is the house in which he was born/grew up.
I rather fancied the house owned by Evelyn Waugh, not so very far from me. Of course it would probably need lots of central heating/bathrooms added and a large 'staff' to keep it running smoothly. I'm sure I would be quite comfortable. ;-)

Lauramarie, you asked about Victor Hugo. I have stayed on the island of Guernsey in a hotel right next to his house, unfortunately it was closed during my visit.
I understand that he had to leave France in a hurry when his dislike/lack of support for Louis Napoleon became known. He first settled on Jersey, again had to leave and stayed on in Guernsey for many years.

The comments cracked me up-some were highly offended at which houses were not included. As if this was the one and only definitive list and as if it really matters!

veer - Thanks for the Victor Hugo info.

caroline ky - Key Lime pie ... oh, my! [one of my favourites -- love the tang!]

Since I've relocated to a semi-tropical area, I'll take Hemingway's home in Key West. I'd feel lost in most of the other enormous houses, Wharton's, et al.