Description
Book SynopsisFrom ravenous bedbugs to penny-pinching landladies, from disreputable housemates to "boarder's beef,Gamber illuminates the annoyances-and the satisfactions-of nineteenth-century boarding life.
Trade ReviewMs. Gamber paints an exhausting picture of the typical landlady's work and expense and the residents' grumblings. -- Nina C. Ayoub Chronicle of Higher Education 2007 Gamber does a good job introducing and discussing this once-ubiquitous institution. Choice A lively account. Book News 2008 This book is an important scholarly contribution that helps us understand how the most basic challenges of life... had a profound impact on the American past. It is a model of creative social history that encourages scholars to transcend traditional intellectual boundaries and begin new conversations in a fragmented academic world. -- Eric J. Morser Enterprise and Society 2008 Crucial reading for scholars interested in the nineteenth-century city, women's work and entrepreneurship, and the development of domestic ideology. -- Elaine Frantz Parsons American Historical Review 2008 An excellent and important book that reframes the meaning of the home. -- Amy S. Greenberg Journal of Social History 2009
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Houses and Homes
1. Away from Home
2. Keeping House
3. "The Most Cruel and Thankless Way a Woman Can EarnHer Living"
4. Boarders' Beefs
5. Nests of Crime and Dens of Vice
6. "Will They Board, or Keep House?"
7. Charity Begins at Home
Epilogue: "Decay of the Boarding-House"
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
