The Cosmopolitan Interior: Liberalism and the British Home, 1870-1914

Abstract

Judith Neiswander has produced a fascinating book on the late nineteenth-century craze for home decoration and its broader intellectual significance. Domestic interior studies have grown dramatically in the past decade, and a wealth of new books have recently appeared (or are about to appear) on the social meaning of the British domestic interior in history. These include studies of nineteenth-century household goods by Deborah Cohen and Margaret Ponsonby, and Amanda Vickery's recent study of private life in the eighteenth century. Uniting the interests of art- and design-historians in the decoration of the home with a broader analysis of shifts in society and culture, this new field explores the meaning of the material world in history. Neiswander's book is a substantial addition to this field, as, in examining late nineteenth-century decorative advice literature, it takes a well-trodden area of art- and design-history, and, through close research and in-depth textual exploration, demonstrates its significance in the wider context of British society and thought, and in particular for understandings of late Victorian liberalism.