PART ONE. 1.The Family Way ; 2.A Room of One's Own ; 3.Home and the World ; 4.Home Furnishings ; 5.Building Myths -- PART TWO. 6.Hearth and Home ; 7.The Home Network -- Coda: Not a home.
Summary
The idea that 'home' is a special place, a separate place, a place where we can be our true selves, is so obvious to us today that we barely pause to think about it. But, as Judith Flanders shows, 'home' is a relatively new idea. When in 1900 Dorothy assured the citizens of Oz that 'There is no place like home', she was expressing a view that was the climax of 300 years of change. Flanders traces the evolution of the house from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century across northern Europe and America, and shows how the homes we know today bear only a faint resemblance to homes though history. Along the way she investigates the development of ordinary household items - from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to the fitted kitchen, plumbing and windows - while also dismantling many domestic myths.