The Making of Home: The 500-year story of how our houses became homes

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

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 in this revealing book, 'home' is a relatively new concept. When in 1900 Dorothy assured the citizens of Oz that 'There is no place like home', she was expressing a view that was a culmination of 300 years of economic, physical and emotional change.

In The Making of Home, Flanders traces the evolution of the house across northern Europe and America from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, and paints a striking picture of how the homes we know today differ from homes through history.

The transformation of houses into homes, she argues, was not a private matter, but an essential ingredient in the rise of capitalism and the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Without 'home', the modern world as we know it would not exist, and as Flanders charts the development of ordinary household objects - from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to fitted kitchens, plumbing and windows - she also peels back the myths that surround some of our most basic assumptions, including our entire notion of what it is that makes a family.

As full of fascinating detail as her previous bestsellers, The Making of Home is also a book teeming with original and provocative ideas.

Reviews

Fascinating... A treasure chest, bursting with facts and thoughts about what homes mean and how they have been lived in: a perfect book to curl up with in the comfort of your own. -- Frances Wilson * Mail on Sunday *
From the humble shack to the modern high-rise, Judith Flanders brilliantly illuminates the meaning of "home" throughout history. The Making of Home is a fascinating and ambitious exploration into the soul of family life. We are more than what we eat, we are also how we live. * Amanda Foreman *
In this clever and entertaining book Flanders gives the everyday, from bed-making to drainpipes, all the vivid interest of something newly made strange. -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Sunday Times *

A delicious yet nerdy treat... This book deserves a place on your shelves, bedside table, or ottoman

* The Times *
Even though I often wanted to argue with its author, I loved this book. -- Victoria Glendinning * Literary Review *
The Making of Home is filled with bold arguments and memorable details... A compelling account of what was gained and lost in the quest for cosiness -- Ben Highmore * Observer *
Magnificent... Wonderfully rich and witty -- Bee Wilson * TLS *
Judith Flanders has many interesting, and sometimes startling, things to say about what domesticity means to us, how that meaning changed - and how it has endured... She is an efficient debunker of myths about poverty, family and the past. -- Lucy Lethbridge * Financial Times *
This is a hugely informative book, and worth reading for the feminist chapter on women's changing roles alone. An absorbing read. * Daily Express *
Thought-provoking... Deeply absorbing -- Charlotte Moore * Spectator *
In The Making of Home, historian Judith Flanders furnishes fascinating detail on how houses have been made to feel like "home" over 500 years. * Wall Street Journal *
[A] wonderful social history ... a riveting, whistle-stop tour through history. * Daily Mail *

Author Bio

Judith Flanders is the author of the bestselling The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (2003); the critically acclaimed Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (2006); A Circle of Sisters (2001), which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award; The Invention of Murder (2011); and, most recently, The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (2012). She is a frequent contributor to the Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement. Currently a senior research fellow at the University of Buckingham, she lives in London.