Enfilade

The 6 volumes appeared in 2020; the stand-alone volume on the Enlightenment became available in 2022 (see below); another option will appear in 2024.

Amanda Flather (anthology editor), A Cultural History of the Home, volumes 1–6 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), ISBN: ‎ 978-1472584410, $610.

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  Antiquity, 800 BCE–800 CE
2  Medieval Age, 800–1450
3  Renaissance, 1450–1648
4  Age of Enlightenment, 1648–1815
5  Age of Empire, 1815–1920
6  Modern Age, 1920–Present

Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters:
• The Meaning of the Home
• Family and Household
• The House
• Furniture and Furnishings
• Home and Work
• Gender and Home
• Hospitality and Home
• 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.

Amanda Flather is Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Essex. She is the author of Gender and Space in Early Modern England (2006).

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Clive Edwards, ed., A Cultural History of the Home in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1472584250, $110. The paperback edition will be available in 2024.

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.

Clive Edwards is Emeritus Professor of Design History at Loughborough University. He is editor of The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (2015) and author of Turning Houses into Homes: A History of the Retailing and Consumption of Domestic Furnishings (2017), The Twentieth Century Interiors Sourcebook (2013), Interior Design: A Critical Introduction (2010), How to Read Pattern: A Crash Course in Textile Design (2009), Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, Soft Furnishings and Floor Coverings (2007), British Furniture: 1600–2000 (2006), and Encyclopedia of Furniture Materials, Trades, and Techniques (2001).

c o n t e n t s

1  The Meaning of Home — Karen Lipsedge
2  Family and Household —Helen Metcalfe
3  The House — Stephen Hague
4  Furniture and Furnishings — Clive Edwards
5  Home and Work — Leonie Hannan
6  Gender and Home — Ruth Larsen
7  Hospitality and Home — Woodruff Smith
8  Religion and the Home — Matthew Neal