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Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England

Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England

by Amanda Vickery (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2009

    $8.90
Synopsis

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.

$8.90

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2 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 368
 Edition: Third Impression
 Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 02 Oct 2009
ISBN 10: 0300154534
ISBN 13: 9780300154535

Media Reviews
If until now the Georgian home has been like a monochrome engraving, Vickery has made it three dimensional and vibrantly colored. Behind Closed Doors demonstrates that rigorous academic work can also be nosy, gossipy, and utterly engaging. --Andrea Wulf, New York Times Book Review

--Andrea Wulf New York Times Book Review (12/16/2009)
If until now the Georgian home has been like a monochrome engraving, Vickery has made it three dimensional and vibrantly colored. Behind Closed Doors demonstrates that rigorous academic work can also be nosy, gossipy, and utterly engaging. Andrea Wulf, New York Times Book Review

--Andrea Wulf New York Times Book Review (12/16/2009)
Comparison between Vickery and Jane Austen is irresistible. . . This book is almost too pleasurable, in that Vickery's style and delicious nosiness conceal some seriously weighty scholarship. Lisa Hilton, The Independent
--Lisa Hilton The Independent (12/06/2009)
Author Bio
Amanda Vickery is reader in history, Royal Holloway University of London, and the author of The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England, which won the Whitfield, Wolfson, and Longman-History Today prizes. She is also the co-editor, with John Styles, of Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700-1830.