Description
Book SynopsisMaterial relations tells the story of nineteenth and early twentieth century middle-class families by exploring the domestic spaces they inhabited and the material goods they prized. By opening the doors of the house, the book sheds new light on aspects of family life including love, marriage, sex, childhood and death.
Trade Review'A lively, interesting and important book...Material Relations is a fine achievement. Engagingly written, attractively produced and generously illustrated.'
Times Higher Education, March 17, 2011
'Hamlett has uncovered the complexities of domestic relationships over the life cycle and, in so doing, has offered a more three-dimensional vision of lived experiences in the past.'
Sandra Trudgen Dawson, Northern Illinois University, Journal of British Studies, 1 April 2012
'This is an interesting, worthwhile book which brings together a mass of recent research: it is robustly interdisciplinary in its approach while raising a series of important historical questions about our understanding of Victorian home life.'
Carol Dyhouse, University of Sussex, 1 June 2012
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Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Inside the middle-class home: space and the limits of the private
2. Material marriages: creating domestic interiors, defining marital relationships
3. “Tiresome trips downstairs”: childhood experience and the domestic interior
4. Leaving home: schools, colleges and lodgings
5. Death, memory and the reconstruction of home
Epilogue: from Victorian to Modern?
Bibliography
Index
