Open houses : poverty, the novel, and the architectural idea in nineteenth-century Britain / Barbara Leckie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leckie, Barbara, author.

Series:

Haney Foundation series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Working class--Dwellings--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Working class.

Architecture, Domestic--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Architecture, Domestic.

Housing--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Housing.

Architecture, Domestic, in literature.

Dwellings in literature.

Poor in literature.

Architecture and society--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Architecture and society.

Literature and society--England--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

History.

Working class--Dwellings.

England.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

303 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018]

Summary:

"In the 1830s and '40s, a new preoccupation with the housing of the poor emerged in British print and visual culture. In response to cholera outbreaks, political unrest, and government initiatives, commentators evinced a keen desire to document housing conditions and agitate for housing reform. Consistently and strikingly, these efforts focused on opening the domestic interiors of the poor to public view. In Open Houses, Barbara Leckie addresses the massive body of print materials dedicated to convincing the reader of the wretchedness, unworthiness, and antipoetic quality of the living conditions of the poor and, accordingly, the urgent need for architectural reform. Putting these expošs into dialogue with the Victorian novel and the architectural idea (the manipulation of architecture and the built environment to produce certain effects), she illustrates the ways in which "looking into" the house animated new models for social critique and fictional form. As housing conditions failed to improve despite the ubiquity of these documentary and fictional exposés, commentators became increasingly skeptical about the capacity of print to generate change. Focusing on Bleak House, Middlemarch, and The Princess Casamassima, Leckie argues that writers offered a persuasive counterargument for the novel's intervention in social debates. Open Houses returns the architectural idea to the central position it occupied in nineteenth-century England and reconfigures how we understand innovations in the genre of the novel, the agitation for social reform, and the contours of nineteenth-century modernity"--provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : "Let us look into the house"

A simple idea of architecture

The dark side of the interior

"The ruined house" : Charles Dickens's Bleak House

The mediating imagination : George Eliot's Middlemarch

The interpenetrating imagination : Henry James's The Princess Casamassima

Conclusion : The epistemology of the house.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-292) and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Sargent fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9780812250299

081225029X

OCLC:

1006471097