Table Of ContentAt Home in the
Eighteenth Century
The eighteenth-century home, in terms of its structure, design, func-
tion, and furnishing, was a site of transformation – of spaces, identities,
and practices. Home has myriad meanings, and although the eighteenth
century in the common imagination is often associated with taking tea
on polished mahogany tables, a far wider world of experience remains
to be introduced. At Home in the Eighteenth Century brings together
factual and fictive texts and spaces to explore aspects of the typical
Georgian home that we think we know from Jane Austen novels and
extant country houses while also engaging with uncharacteristic and
underappreciated aspects of the home. At the core of the volume is the
claim that exploring eighteenth-century domesticity from a range of
disciplinary vantage points can yield original and interesting questions,
as well as reveal new answers. Contributions from the fields of literature,
history, archaeology, art history, heritage studies, and material culture
bring the home more sharply into focus. In this way At Home in the
Eighteenth Century reveals a more nuanced and fluid concept of the
eighteenth-century home and becomes a steppingstone to greater under-
standing of domestic space for undergraduate level and beyond.
Stephen G. Hague is an Associate Professor of Modern European History
at Rowan University. He specializes in British and British imperial his-
tory and is the author of The Gentleman’s House in the British Atlantic
World, 1680–1780 (2015). He researches and writes on the intersections
of political, social, cultural, and architectural history.
Karen Lipsedge is an Associate Professor in English Literature, at King-
ston University, England. Her research focuses on eighteenth-century
domestic space, material culture, and society and its representation in
British eighteenth-century literature and art. She is the author of Domes-
tic Space in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel (2012) and has written
and presented widely on the representation of home, the interior, and
the lived experience of domestic space in eighteenth-century literature
and art.
Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures
and Societies
Series Editors: Elaine Chalus and Deborah Simonton
The long eighteenth century sits as a pivotal point between the early-
modern and modern worlds. By actively encouraging an international
focus for the series over all, both in terms of wide-ranging geographical
topics and authorial locations, the series aims to feature cutting-edge
research from established and recent scholars, and capitalize on the
breadth of themes and topics that new approaches to research in the
period reveal. This series provides a forum for recent and established
historians to present new research and explore fresh approaches to cul-
ture and society in the long eighteenth century. As a crucial period of
transition, the period saw developments that shaped perceptions of the
place of the individual and the collective in the construction of the mod-
ern world. Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies is a series that is
globally ambitious in scope and broad in its desire to publish cutting-
edge research that takes an innovative, multi-vocal and increasingly
holistic approach to the period. The series will be particularly sensitive
to questions of gender and class, but aims to embrace and explore a vari-
ety of fresh approaches and methodologies.
Daily Lives and Daily Routines in the Long Eighteenth Century
Edited by Gudrun Andersson and Jon Stobart
Comfort in the Eighteenth-Century Country House
Jon Stobart
At Home in the Eighteenth Century
Interrogating Domestic Space
Edited by Stephen G. Hague and Karen Lipsedge
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Studies-in-Eighteenth-Century-Cultures-and-Societies/
book-series/RSECCS
At Home in the
Eighteenth Century
Interrogating Domestic Space
Edited by Stephen G. Hague
and Karen Lipsedge
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2022 Taylor & Francis
The right of Stephen G. Hague and Karen Lipsedge to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hague, Stephen G. (Stephen George), 1967- editor. |
Lipsedge, Karen, editor. Title: At home in the eighteenth century :
interrogating domestic space / edited by Stephen G. Hague and
Karen Lipsedge.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Routledge studies in eighteenth-century cultures and
societies | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021014393 (print) | LCCN 2021014394 (ebook) |
Subjects: LCSH: Home economics—History—18th century. |
Material culture—History—18th century. | Domestic space—
History—18th century. | Households—Great Britain—History—18th
century. | Households—United States—History—18th century.
Classification: LCC TX18 .A83 2022 (print) | LCC TX18 (ebook) |
DDC 640—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014393
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014394
ISBN: 978-0-367-27679-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-07361-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29726-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429297267
Typeset in Sabon
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
At Home in the Eighteenth-Century is
dedicated to Liliane Lipsedge (1933–2017)
Forever in my heart.
&
S.W.H. (1970–2009)
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xiii
Notes on Contributors xv
Introduction 1
STEPHEN G. HAGUE AND KAREN LIPSEDGE
PART I
The Organization and Arrangement of Space 19
1 Staging Fictions for Domestic Privacy in Early
Eighteenth-century London Households 21
PAULA HUMFREY
2 Reading Pamela through the Domestic Parlor: Rooms,
Social Class, and Gender 42
KAREN LIPSEDGE
3 “I Will Not Be Thus Constrained”: Domestic Power,
Shame, and the Role of the Staircase in Richardson’s Clarissa 58
KRISTIN M. DISTEL
4 “A Small House in the Country”: Cottage Dreams
and Desires in the Eighteenth-Century English Imagination 82
JULIE PARK
PART II
Money, Value, and Consumption 105
5 “I Am Now Determined to Inform You What I Am Sure
will Amaze You”: Objects, Domestic Space, and the
Economics of Gentility 107
STEPHEN G. HAGUE
viii Contents
6 Home Economics: Female Estate Managers in
Long Eighteenth-century Fiction and Society 126
BETH CORTESE
7 Genteel, Respectable, and Airy: The Lodgings
Market in London, 1770–1800 147
GILLIAN WILLIAMSON
8 “Great Earthly Riches Are No Real Advantage to Our
Posterity …”: Space, Archaeology, and the Philadelphia Home 174
DEBORAH L. MILLER
PART III
Different Perspectives on Home 199
9 Transatlantic Domesticity and the Limits of a Genre in
The Woman of Colour 201
VICTORIA BARNETT-WOODS
10 Making Room: Queer Domesticity in Jane Austen’s
Emma and the Anne Lister Diaries 225
MARGARET A. MILLER
11 Servants’ Furniture: Hierarchies and Identities
in the English Country House 245
JON STOBART
12 Making the Bed, Making the Lower-order Home in
Eighteenth-century Scotland 266
KATIE BARCLAY
13 Hierarchies of the Home: Spaces, Things, and People
in the Eighteenth Century 283
LAURA C. KEIM
14 Twenty-first Century Visitors in Eighteenth-century
Spaces: Challenges and Opportunities 307
OLIVER COX
Conclusion: Assessing Eighteenth-Century Domestic Space 325
STEPHEN G. HAGUE AND KAREN LIPSEDGE
Further Reading 331
Index 349
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 William Hogarth, The Harlot’s Progress, Plate 1. 26
1.2 William Hogarth, The Harlot’s Progress, Plate 2. 26
1.3 William Hogarth, The Harlot’s Progress, Plate 3. 27
1.4 William Hogarth, “Masquerade ticket” (1727),
Hogarth’s satirical rendering of a masquerade ball
in progress, shows participants wearing animal and
cartoon masks as they adopt confessional postures
toward one another. 28
2.1 Joseph Highmore, “Lady Davers and Pamela in the
Parlour” (1743–44). “I must tell your ladyship, I scorn
your words and am as much married as your ladyship!”
(Pamela, 421). 51
4.1 Eighteenth-Century Estate Worker’s Cottage
(limestone with slate roof). Stourhead Estate, Wiltshire. 85
4.2 Two Laborers’ Cottages. 86
4.3 A Retired Gentleman’s Cottage. 87
4.4 A design for a cottage ornée that borrows from
picturesque codes. 89
4.5 Stourhead Gothic Cottage. Constructed as an
ornament on the landscape, and a place to rest during
a walk through the pleasure garden. 96
4.6 A laborer’s cottage, exemplifying picturesque codes
of roughness, irregularity, and blending the building
into its natural surroundings. 97
5.1 Portrait of John Elbridge (1672–1739), artist
unknown. This is a portrait Elbridge likely sent as
a gift to one of his sisters living in Massachusetts. 108
5.2 Cote house, also referred to as “the house over the
Down,” Westbury-on-Trym, near Bristol. Probably
built about 1720, Cote was one of the houses
John Elbridge owned and his primary residence at the
end of his life. 111
