They may combine a Winchester excursion with a visit to Chawton Cottage, her pleasant country home 15 miles west of town. Now the Jane Austen's House Museum, this is where many of her greatest works----including Emma and Persuasion----were penned. Victorian author Thomas Hardy hailed from the neighboring county of Dorset and also mined this bucolic area for literary inspiration. He revived the historic name of Wessex in works such as The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd and renamed many local towns and cities----Dorchester became "Casterbridge" and Winchester "Wintoncester," where Tess (as in Tess of the d'Urbervilles) was executed.

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Location: Hampshire, England

Website: www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk