A Cultural History of the Home in the Modern Age

During the period of the Enlightenment, the word home could refer to a specific and defined physical living space, the location of domestic life, and a concept related to ideas of roots, origins, and retreat. The transformations that the Enlightenment encouraged created the circumstances for the concept of home to change and develop in the following three ways. First to influence homemaking were the literary and cultural manifestations that included issues around attitudes to education, social order and disorder, sensibility, and sexuality. Secondly, were the roles of visual and material culture of the home that demonstrated themselves through print, portraiture, literature, objects and products, and dress and fashion. Thirdly, were the industrial and sociological aspects that included concepts of luxury, progress, trade and technology, consumption, domesticity, and the notions of public and private spaces within a home.The chapters in this volume therefore discuss and reflect upon issues relating to the home through a range of approaches. Enlightenment homes are examined in terms of signification and meaning; the persons who inhabited them; the physical buildings and their furniture and furnishings; the work undertaken within them; the differing roles of men and women; the nature of hospitality, and the important role of religion in the home. Taken together they give a valuable overview of the manners, customs, and operation of the Enlightenment home

"A Cultural History of the Home provides a comprehensive survey of the domestic space from ancient times to the present. Spanning 2800 years, the six volumes explore how different cultures and societies have established, developed and used the home. It reveals a great deal about how people have lived day-to-day in a range of regions and epochs by providing a historical focus on the location in which they will have spent much of their time: the domestic space. 1. A Cultural History of the Home in Antiquity (800 BCE - 800 CE) 2. A Cultural History of the Home in the Medieval Age (800 - 1450) 3. A Cultural History of the Home in the Renaissance (1450 - 1648) 4. A Cultural History of the Home in the Age of Enlightenment (1648 - 1815) 5. A Cultural History of the Home in the Age of Empire (1815 - 1920) 6. A Cultural History of the Home in the Modern Age (1920 - present) Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. The Meaning of the Home 2. Family and Household 3. The House 4. Furniture and Furnishings 5. Home and Work 6. Gender and Home 7. Hospitality and Home 8. Religion and Home This structure offers readers a broad overview of a period within each volume or the opportunity to follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter across volumes. Generously illustrated, the full six-volume set combines to present the most detailed survey available on the home in history"--