House and Home in Georgian Ireland
Spaces and Cultures of Domestic Life
Conor Lucey, editor
"This [is a] handsomely-produced series of essays ... One of the great strengths of this book is the consistently subtle use of a wide variety of source material to revel hidden histories ... This volume, a major contribution to the subject, activates, imbues with life and charges with significance the numerous very different domestic spaces that is considers." William Laffan, Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies 2023.
“The study of domestic life in eighteenth-century Britain, Europe and North America is a rich area ofscholarship that has grown considerably in recent years … However, the ways in which rooms and spaces were lived in and experienced in Georgian Ireland have not received the sustained attention they deserve, despite a growing literature on Irish domestic architecture and material culture of those years. This collection of essays seeks to address such questions in the Irish context, a challenge that it more than meets … the contributors make excellent use of a wide range of sources, offering a rarely attainable sense of everyday routines and the multitude of factors informing decision-making in relation to decorating and furnishing the home. The new perspectives provided are tantalising in their granularity, while also addressing larger overarching questions around politeness, leisure, lifecycle, gender and consumption ... The studies in this collection individually and collectively shed important new light on cultures of domestic life in Georgian Ireland. They go far beyond discussion of ladies politely drinking tea in drawing rooms — the image some have in mind when thinking of eighteenth-century domestic life. Through the research presented here, a more nuanced and complex concept of the home in Georgian Ireland emerges. While further avenues for research abound, these essays will serve as methodological models for future scholars. The collection will be required reading for all historians of architecture, material culture and society in Georgian Ireland, and will also, no doubt, be of great interest to scholars of domestic life in eighteenth-century Britain, North America and Europe.” Anna Moran, Architectural History 66: 2023
"House and Home in Georgian Ireland succeeds in its ambitious aim of addressing the purposes and uses of Ireland’s Georgian dwellings and how their architecture, interiors and contents played their part in Irish life. […] The essays are rich in revelations on a variety of subjects, including male midwives, nursing chairs, caudle cups, Irish and imported ceramics, the increasing consumption of tea and the furniture and paraphernalia of eating and drinking (often to excess). […] This broad, multi- disciplinary survey is backed up by copious footnotes, setting the articles in a scholarly context." Christopher Rowell, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 165, September 2023.
“the book stokes the underbelly of grand facades and archetypal scenes of poverty to reveal the quotidian living habits across the period’s social spectrum ... The overlapping themes of basic human requirements, material culture, social mores, and the role of speculative development undulate through the chapters ... Collectively, the writers weave a rich tapestry that helps to illuminate the shadowy corners of our urban and rural domestic history.” Graham Hickey, Architecture Ireland, Vol. 329. 2023
“House and Home in Georgian Ireland is an absorbing compendium of ten essays on design and life in the long 18th century … the volume devotes much space to the homes of the wealthy merchant and Anglo-Irish landlord classes, for which rich archival and material evidence survives in handsome urban terraces and sumptuous country mansions ... most of the essays shine flashes of light on individual lives: Dean Swift, the great literary satirist, owned the first recorded silver decanter labels, as well as six china coffee cups.” Maev Kennedy, The ART Newspaper, January 2023
“A beautifully-produced book, House and Home in Georgian Ireland is an innovative collection of ten essays exploring the intersections of daily life and domestic design in Irish homes during the long eighteenth century … the collection as a whole is remarkably coherent, providing a thorough and original examination of the complex relationships between individuals and their homes in Ireland during this moment of profound social and political change, and referencing the broader historical themes of gender, power and class.” Hannah Cogan, Women's History Association of Ireland, March 2023.
"In this volume, cataloguing and describing have given way to interpreting and understanding, reflecting a new interest in how objects and buildings were used and how they acquired meaning through such use.[...] The overarching interest in this fascinating volume is not in documenting sterile boxes, but in examining how lived-in spaces worked." Peter Murray, Irish Arts Review, Spring 2023.
"An interesting collection of essays dealing with a number of aspects of domestic life from the 'long eighteenth century.'[...] A stimulating, different perspective on these familiar themes." Archaeology Ireland, Summer 2023.
"One of the pleasures of reading House and Home in Georgian Ireland is the richness of detail which each author of this collected volume commits to its pages. [...] Contained within the collection is a wealth of reflections and careful considerations of lives lived in Irish houses during the period.[...] A series of powerful impressions of intimate historical interiors." Helen McCormack Journal of Design History
