The Working Class at Home, 1790-1940

This book examines life in the homes inhabited by the working class over the long nineteenth century. These working—class homes are often imagined as distinctly unhomely spaces, which the inhabitants struggled to fill with even the most basic of furniture, let alone acquire the comforts associated with middle—class domestic space. The concerned reformers of industrialising towns and cities painted a picture of severe deprivation, of rooms that were both cramped yet bare at the same time, an...