Ebook: Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England
Author: Vickery Amanda
- Tags: Households -- England -- History -- 18th century., Social status -- England -- History -- 18th century., Sex role -- England -- History -- 18th century., Social control -- England -- History -- 18th century., Material culture -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century., Great Britain -- History -- 1714-1837., England -- Social conditions -- 18th century., Households., Material culture., Sex role., Social control., Social conditions, Social status., England., Great Britain.
- Year: 2009
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- City: England, Great Britain, New Haven, Great Britain., England
- Edition: 3rd
- Language: English
- epub
In this brilliant new work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, 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.
Vickery makes ingenious 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