Autor(en)

Garrett, Elisabeth Donaghy:

Verlag / Jahr

New York : H.N. Abrams, 1990.

Format / Einband

Mit zahlr. auch farb. Abb. Originalleinen mit Schutzumschlag. 304 S.

Sprache

Deutsch

Gewicht

ca. 1550 g

ISBN

0810918943

EAN

9780810918948

Bestell-Nr

974041

Bemerkungen

Umschlag leicht berieben, sonst gutes Exemplar. - We are fascinated by old houses, but time has blurred our sense of what it was like to live in them. Electricity, the automobile, and modern medicine have altered traditional patterns of domestic life, making the furniture, floor plans, and room arrangements of former days puzzling to us. We may wonder why families needed two parlors and two kitchens. Why was the kitchen settle designed with a high back, casters, and a lidded seat? How often did you have to snuff the candle on the bedside table while you read by its glow? What was it like when three generations of family gathered in cramped intimacy in the parlor for warmth, light, and entertainment? Answers to questions like these abound in 18th-and 19th-century diaries, letters, household manuals, and novels and in contemporary paintings and prints. Drawing on all these sources -exploring the past with the voice and vision of those who were there - Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett fashions a unique, unforgettable picture of middle-class American home life between 1750 and 1870. Garrett leads us into the various rooms- parlor, dining room, kitchen, bedchamber, attic, and hall - and the early American house miraculously comes to life. We watch anxiously as a best bedroom is turned hastily into a sick bay by the addition of pallets and cribs. We stand by the fireplace in a frosty kitchen, toasting either our faces or our backs (never both at once). We share in the great domestic upheaval of spring cleaning without benefit of vacuum cleaner and in the weekly wash, which took a whole day and required ten different steps and a closetful of equipment. We admire the beauty of candlelight and firelight reflected from veneered furniture, brass inlays, and spangled wallpaper, but we also notice the scars from flames that burned too close, testifying to the ever-present danger of fire. We are then introduced to the housewife, who met the endless demands of child care, nursing, hospitality, cooking, and housework with courage, resourcefulness, patience, and endless endurance. Esther Burr of New York City, Sarah Logan Fisher of Philadelphia, Martha Jefferson Randolph of Virginia, Eliza Chinn Ripley of New Orleans, and many others tell us how they managed their homes and lives. Many Americans -men, women, and children, rich and poor, city-dwellers and country folk-speak to us directly on these pages of the sorrows, anxieties, triumphs, and delights of family life. Nearly 200 paintings, drawings, and prints, 101 in color, provide further insights into the tastes and living arrangements of the American family when home was truly the focus of life and the source of its meaning. ISBN 9780810918948

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EUR 24,00

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