The secluded shacks and sheds of famous writers

This little space was Dylan Thomas's writing spot in a small boathouse in Laugharne, Wales. Here, he wrote poems and stories in the 1930s, surrounded by knickknacks, art, and gentle sunlight. It's worth noting crumpled sheets littering the floor—not even a great writing space makes writing easy.

Here is an exterior view of Dylan Thomas's boathouse. It overlooks the lake, giving an expansive view.

Philip Pullman built a shed in his garden when his son took up the violin. This space is where he went to escape the noise as he was writing the His Dark Materials trilogy.

This is the exterior of Roald Dahl's writing space, the Gipsy Hut. From the outside, no one would guess that this is where the writer created his fantastical and joyous stories.

It seems somehow fitting that Dahl wrote in a big comfy easychair. He put a tray across the arms of the chair in order to write on and tried to keep everything within arm's reach. According to frequent collaborator Quentin Blake, "The table . . . had all kinds of strange memorabilia on it, one of which was part of his own hip bone that had been removed; another was a ball of silver paper that he'd collected from bars of chocolate since he was a young man and it had gradually increased in size. There were various other things that had been sent to him by fans or schoolchildren."

The prolific playwright George Bernard Shaw might just be the original tiny house innovator. He built his 64-square-foot writer's hut in his garden, and he placed it on a circular track so he could rotate it throughout the day and follow the sun (genius!). He also named it "London" so that when people were trying to track him down, they could be told he was away at London.

Virginia Woolf once wrote that a woman must have a room of her own in order to write fiction. One of the most important novelists of the 20th century, Woolf herself had an excellent writing room, a shed at Monk's House in Sussex, England. As you can see, the shed was sparse, with a great view of green space outdoors, and a large writing table. This space was as distraction-free as possible, though Woolf was often interrupted by visiting dogs and the activities of her husband outside.

This list would not be complete without Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond. This is a reconstruction of that tiny hut where he wrote his masterpiece, Walden.

This space where 19th-century poet and priest Robert Stephen Hawker wrote truly deserves the title of "shack." The small spot built into a hillside in Cornwall gave Hawker great views of the Atlantic. A notable eccentric, Hawker went into his tiny hut to write poems and take opium. (He also excommunicated his cat for mousing on Sundays.)

Louis de Bernieres, the author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, also writes in a shed in his garden. He has a solar panel wired up to power his laptop and CD player, and writes without any disturbances—except the occasional visit from his cat.