At Home in the Eighteenth Century:

Interrogating Domestic Space

Eds.

Stephen G. Hague, Rowan University

Karen Lipsedge, Kingston University

Published in September 2021 is the eagerly anticipated edited volume At Home in the Eighteenth Century: Interrogating Domestic Space, co-edited by Karen Lipsedge and Stephen Hague and featuring contributions from several BSECS members. The volume argues that the eighteenth-century home was a site of transformation – of spaces, identities, and practices.

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.  At Home in the Eighteenth Century features contributions from the fields of literature, history, archaeology, art history, heritage studies, and material culture. Contributors bring together factual and fictive texts and spaces to evaluate aspects of the typical Georgian home that we know from Jane Austen novels and extant country houses, while moving beyond these more conventional interpretations to engage with uncharacteristic and underappreciated aspects of eighteenth-century domestic space. The thirteen essays reveal a much more nuanced and fluid concept of the home than is often appreciated.

At Home in the Eighteenth Century came to life as a result of several BSECS conference panels and the editors and contributors are especially grateful to BSECS audiences over several years who asked questions, pushed thinking, and helped to shape the volume. It opens up valuable avenues that BSECS and others will surely be investigating.