Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life is the type of history book you wish you'd had in Junior High or High School (but are thankful you found as an adult). History is presented as a series of discoveries and innovations that evolved as people moved through the zeitgeist of their time. At Home was published by Doubleday, a division of Random House in 2010. I read the book soon after it came out, but wanted to re-read it with our Eden By The Bay filter of "Vision 2020".
The setting for the book is the Bryson home, a former Church of England rectory located in Norfolk in eastern England. The rectory is a Victorian house, built by the rector Thomas Marsham in 1850. Bryson decided to write a history of the world by focusing on everyday objects, and how they came to be. He uses each room of the house as a jumping off point, for example, the bathroom launches the reader into a history of hygiene, the kitchen into the history of spice trade and nutrition, and the bedroom into the history of birth, sex, and death. The end sheets of the book provide Ground and Chamber Plans for the rectory and a map for the journey.
The initial chapters, "The Year" and "The Setting" set the stage for the book, by describing what was happening in England and the world in 1850, at the time the Marsham house was built. Bryson starts with the fascinating account of how The Crystal Palace—the largest greenhouse ever made with the most glass panels ever produced—was being built for the Paris Exhibition, designed by the 23-year old head gardener, Joseph Paxton (we learned a little about that in Garden History – Innovation of Glass Houses).
From there, Bryson takes the reader on a tour of all the rooms of the house, including the hall, kitchen, scullery, drawing room, celler, study, stairs (where an early version of the bathroom was originally designed to go), bedrooms, dressing room, nursery, attic, and so forth, and artfully explores related topics. Naturally, one of my favorite "rooms" was the garden. Bryson covers topics such as the beginning of the landscape movement, plant hunters, railroads and suburban living, gardening by the middle class (including women), park-like cemeteries and public parks, guano and fertilizer, plant diseases and famines, grafting, and lawns and lawn mowers.
One of Bryson's discoveries on his journey is that throughout history, homes were not necessarily designed for comfort. Comfort in the home is a fairly recent idea. Thankfully, we're living at a time when we take great pleasure in the comfort of our homes! I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys history and would like to learn more about how our homes evolved (and speculate how they might continue to evolve in the future)!
The setting for the book is the Bryson home, a former Church of England rectory located in Norfolk in eastern England. The rectory is a Victorian house, built by the rector Thomas Marsham in 1850. Bryson decided to write a history of the world by focusing on everyday objects, and how they came to be. He uses each room of the house as a jumping off point, for example, the bathroom launches the reader into a history of hygiene, the kitchen into the history of spice trade and nutrition, and the bedroom into the history of birth, sex, and death. The end sheets of the book provide Ground and Chamber Plans for the rectory and a map for the journey.
The initial chapters, "The Year" and "The Setting" set the stage for the book, by describing what was happening in England and the world in 1850, at the time the Marsham house was built. Bryson starts with the fascinating account of how The Crystal Palace—the largest greenhouse ever made with the most glass panels ever produced—was being built for the Paris Exhibition, designed by the 23-year old head gardener, Joseph Paxton (we learned a little about that in Garden History – Innovation of Glass Houses).
From there, Bryson takes the reader on a tour of all the rooms of the house, including the hall, kitchen, scullery, drawing room, celler, study, stairs (where an early version of the bathroom was originally designed to go), bedrooms, dressing room, nursery, attic, and so forth, and artfully explores related topics. Naturally, one of my favorite "rooms" was the garden. Bryson covers topics such as the beginning of the landscape movement, plant hunters, railroads and suburban living, gardening by the middle class (including women), park-like cemeteries and public parks, guano and fertilizer, plant diseases and famines, grafting, and lawns and lawn mowers.
One of Bryson's discoveries on his journey is that throughout history, homes were not necessarily designed for comfort. Comfort in the home is a fairly recent idea. Thankfully, we're living at a time when we take great pleasure in the comfort of our homes! I highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys history and would like to learn more about how our homes evolved (and speculate how they might continue to evolve in the future)!
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