REVIEWS:
Podcast Courtesy: Blackwell Online, Podularity

"Few writers have such a talent for transforming the driest historical source into a gripping narrative, for teasing stories from account books, inventories, ledgers and pattern books. … If until now the Georgian home has been like a monochrome engraving, Vickery has made it three dimensional and vibrantly colored. “Behind Closed Doors” demonstrates that rigorous academic work can also be nosy, gossipy and utterly engaging."
-Andrea Wulf, The New York Times, 16 December, 2009

"It is a perfect balance between academic and popular history writing, which might also be said of Amanda Vickery's Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. Comparison between Vickery and Jane Austen is irresistible. In a sense, this is history on the scale of the famous square of ivory on which Austen claimed the ideal novel should be created: graceful, delicate, sparkling with sprezzatura. As with Austen's novels, though, Vickery's research into the landscapes of Georgian domestic politics reveals a great deal more than embroidery going on in the drawing-room. This book is almost too pleasurable, in that Vickery's style and delicious nosiness conceal some seriously weighty scholarship. Using more than 60 archives, Vickery develops her theories through the perceptions of her protagonists, themselves so vivid and memorable that observations such as 'The battle of wainscot versus marble, or stucco versus rampant wallpaper was a motif of a wider cultural debate in which gender was a weapon' sneak slyly under the dado." -Lisa Hilton, Independent, December 2009

"Amanda Vickery fleshes out a nuanced and often shocking portrait of the Georgian home [to create] a vivid portrait of 18th-century lives as they were lived: at home, in bed, in the Parlour of Venus, and in secret chambers of all kinds"
- Sarah Bakewell, Independent, 4th December 2009

"[A] beautifully textured exploration of domestic life".
- Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman,  5th December 2009

"Professor Vickery is a thorough and disciplined academic who has trawled through many often obscure archives and tapped unusual or long neglected reservoirs of information. But not for a moment is she overwhelmed by the mighty volume of her research. She weaves it all into a compelling narrative packed with anecdote, strange characters and all manner of weird and wonderful details about Georgian home life."
- Dan Cruickshank, Country Life

"Vickery is that rare thing an academic historian who writes like a novelist... an enthralling slice of domestic history".
- Jane Shilling, Daily Mail, 6th November 2009

“Vickery's great skill lies in combining a sharp forensic eye with the ability to spot and tell stories, moving between different scales so smoothly that you can't see the joins. And then there is the wit of the thing. Few academic historians manage to be so funny without compromising the seriousness of their work. She did it 10 years ago in The Gentleman's Daughter and she has done it again here. It was worth the wait.”
- Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian, 24 October 2009

"We see the Georgians at home as we have never seen them before in this ground-breaking book. Vickery can make a young wife’s arrangement of china into an event of thrilling social and psychological tension. Behind Closed Doors is both scholarly and terrifically good fun. Worth staying at home for." - Frances Wilson, Sunday Times, 11th October 2009

"How many academic books make readers laugh out loud? My guess is that I won’t be alone in having that experience of Behind Closed Doors ... [Behind Closed Doors] reveals in a fundamentally novel way how the language of taste actually functioned for those outside of the well-known literary and philosophical elite in this period. Indeed, as someone who imagined they knew the scholarship on interiors, I learned something on almost every page; and it’s also not a small thing to say that unlike almost all the other published books on interiors available, I got the strongest possible sense that Vickery had lived in an interior, and understood how interiors work on a day to day level." - Dr Jason Edwards, University of York

"Vickery is rare as an author who can speculate as to how certain events might actually have felt to those involved, whilst keeping the discussion firmly rooted in the sources and not seeming overfanciful. This is a beautifully written book. It includes important research and thorough engagement with current debates, whilst managing to tell a whole series of cracking good stories." - Dr Kate Retford, Birkbeck College, University of London

"[Vickery] describes Enlightenment domesticity and the growth of elegant taste with wonderful aplomb and infectious enthusiasm ... [Behind Closed Doors] is especially gorgeous in unusual and telling illustrations.” - Christina Hardyment, History Today, October 2009

"Amanda Vickery has uncovered wonderful stories and characters, and written a book that is amusing as it is scholarly. You can hear her voice on every page." - John Mullan

DESCRIPTION:
In this brilliant new work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion; bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings; genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper; and, servants with only a locking box to call their own.

Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer's ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long 18th century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:
 Read more about Amanda Vickery, winner of the Whitfield prize, the Wolfson prize and the Longman-History Today prize.
Also, read what the author has to say about the book in an article for her University website -  Unveiling the Mysteries of English Private Life.

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATIONS:
British & Irish history: c 1700 to c 1900
Social & cultural history

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Illustrations: 64 b&w illustrations + 40 colour images
Number of Pages: 400
Dewey: 306.81094209033