Cover

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: At Home in Nineteenth-Century America

1. The Emergence of the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Ideal

Excerpt from Henry Lee and Mary Lee, Letters and Journals: With Other Family Letters, 1802–1860 (1926)

Excerpt from Lydia Maria Child, “Education of Daughters,” in The American Frugal Housewife (1832)

Excerpt from Catharine Beecher, “On the Preservation of a Good Temper in a Housekeeper,” in A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841)

Excerpt from John Angell James, The Young Man from Home (1838)

“The Sphere of Woman, Translated from the German of Goethe,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, March 1850

Excerpt from Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses: Including Designs for Cottages, Farmhouses, and Villas, with Remarks on Interiors, Furniture, and the Best Modes of Warming and Ventilating (1850)

Excerpt from Susan Warner (pseud. Elizabeth Wetherell), The Wide, Wide World (1850)

Excerpt from Herman Melville, “I and My Chimney,” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, March 1856

2. The Persistence of Domestic Labor

Excerpt from Ward Stafford, New Missionary Field: A Report to the Female Missionary Society for the Poor of the City of New York, and Its Vicinity (1817)

Excerpt from Catharine Maria Sedgwick, The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man (1837)

Excerpt from Clarissa Packard, Recollections of a Housekeeper (1834)

Excerpt from Catharine Beecher, Letters to Persons Who Are Engaged in Domestic Service (1842)

Excerpt from “Home in a Boarding-House,” Lowell Offering 3 (1842)

Excerpt from volume 1 of the diary of Lizzie A. Wilson Goodenough (1865)

Excerpt from Louisa May Alcott, “Experiments,” in Little Women (1869)

Excerpt from Nellie Bly, Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887)

Excerpt from Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana (1853)

Excerpt from “Management of Negroes,” Southern Cultivator, November 1850

3. Home, Civilization, and Citizenship

Excerpt from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly (1852)

Excerpt from W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Problem of Housing the Negro: The Home of the Slave,” Southern Workman 30 (1901)

Dawes Severalty Act of 1887

Susan La Flesche, “The Home-Life of the Indian,” Indian’s Friend 4, no. 10 (1892)

Excerpt from Frances E. Willard, “My First Home Protection Address,” in Woman and Temperance; or, The Work and Workers of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1883)

Ida B. Wells, “A Story of 1900,” Fisk Herald, April 1886

William H. Sylvis, “The Poor Man’s Home,” in The Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of William H. Sylvis (1872)

Excerpt from Caroline H. Dall, “Woman’s Right to Labor”; or, Low Wages and Hard Work: In Three Lectures, Delivered in Boston, November, 1859 (1860)

“The Unpaid Laborer,” Woman’s Standard 4, no. 1 (1889)

4. The American Home on the Move in the Age of Expansion

Excerpt from W. A. Marin, “Sod Houses and Prairie Schooners,” Minnesota History Magazine 12 (1931)

Excerpt from William D. Howells, “The Parlor-Car,” in The Sleeping-Car and Other Farces (1876)

Excerpt from Stephen Crane, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” McClure’s Magazine, February 1898

Excerpt from Mary Antin, The Promised Land (1912)

Images and captions from The Dream City: A Portfolio of Photographic Views of the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893–1894)

“Cozy Corners for Parlors,” Ladies’ Home Journal, July 1890

“Roosevelt Censures Foreign Marriages,” New York Times, May 3, 1908

Excerpt from Caroline S. Shunk, An Army Woman in the Philippines: Extracts from Letters of an Army Officer’s Wife, Describing Her Personal Experiences in the Philippine Islands (1914)

5. At Home in the Late Nineteenth-Century City

Excerpt from Frederick Law Olmsted, Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns: Read before the American Social Science Association at the Lowell Institute, Boston, Feb. 25, 1870 (1870)

Excerpt from, Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910)

Excerpt from Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890)

Excerpt from Stephen Crane, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1893)

Excerpt from Eliza Chester, “Co-operation,” in The Unmarried Woman (1892)

Excerpt from “Not Only for the Women: A White Elephant to Be Made Profitable,” New York Times, May 26, 1878

Excerpt from William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890)

“The Dakota: A Description of One of the Most Perfect Apartment Houses in the World,” New York Times, October 22, 1884

“Roof Sleeping Now Popular in New York,” New York Times, July 5, 1908

“The Marriage Notice of the Future,” Life, November 10, 1887

Excerpt from Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, The Decoration of Houses (1897)

6. Dismantling the Victorian Ideal and the Future of Domesticity

Excerpt from Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (1888)

Excerpt from Mrs. N. F. (Gertrude Bustill) Mossell, “The Opposite Point of View,” in The Work of the Afro-American Woman (1894)

Excerpt from Helen Campbell, “Organized Living,” in Household Economics: A Course of Lectures in the School of Economics of the University of Wisconsin (1897)

Excerpt from Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903)

Excerpt from Mary Abbott, “Individuality in Homes,” House Beautiful, February 1898

Excerpt from Henry L. Wilson, The Bungalow Book (1910)

Excerpt from Martha Bensley Bruère, “The New Home-Making,” Outlook, March 16, 1912

Excerpt from A. L. Hall, “My Workshop at Home,” Suburban Life, November 1908

Excerpt from Michael M. Davis, Jr., The Exploitation of Pleasure: A Study of Commercial Recreations in New York City (1911)

Excerpt from Industrial Housing Associates, Good Homes Make Contented Workers (1919)

Secondary Sources for Further Reading

Index

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About the Author