Behind closed doors
Subtitle: at home in Georgian England
By: Amanda Vickery
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 382
ISBN-13: 9780300154535
Description: In this brilliant new work, the author unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. She introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion, bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings, genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper, servants with only a locking box to call their own.  She makes use of upholsterer's ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Thresholds and boundaries at home; title: Men alone; title: Setting up home; title: His and hers; title: Rooms at the top; title: Wallpaper and taste; title: The trials of domestic dependence; title: A nest of comforts; title: What women made; title: A sex in things?