Enfilade

Upcoming lecture at the University Paris Diderot:

Amanda Vickery — Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England
University Paris Diderot, 26 November 2010

Amanda Vickery (University of Royal Holloway) will present her book, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale University Press, 2009), on Friday, November 26 at 4:30 at the University Paris Diderot, 10 rue Charles V 75004 Paris (Metro St Paul/Sully-Morland/ Bastille).

Professor Vickery, of the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London, lectures on British social, political and cultural history from the 17th century to the present. She is the Director of Royal Holloway’s Bedford Centre for the History of Women. Vickery’s first book, The Gentleman’s Daughter (Yale, 1998), won the Whitfield prize, the Wolfson prize, and the Longman-History Today prize and is considered a reference in 18th-century studies. Professor Vickery’s latest monograph, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England, was published by Yale University Press in December 2009.

The book 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; and, servants with only a locking box to call their own. Professor 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 18th 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.

The book has received rave reviews from critics. Michael Kerrigan from The Scotsman calls it a “beautifully textured exploration of domestic life,” and Frances Wilson from The Sunday Times says: “We see the Georgians at home as we have never seen them before in this ground-breaking book. Behind Closed Doors is both scholarly and terrifically good fun.” The book has been adapted to form a 30-part radio series on BBC Radio 4 on the “history of private life” (aired in autumn 2009) and is soon to be turned into a BBC 2 documentary series (to be broadcast in December 2010).

For further information, please contact: ariane.fennetaux@univ-paris-diderot.fr