Home Sweet Home: The Fabric, Social Structure, and Culture of the Victorian and Edwardian Home
The home life was central to Victorian and Edwardian society. This period saw the emergence of a prosperous and confident middle class whose wealth was based on industry and imperial trade. The values of this society, its vitality and contradictions, were reflected in the industrialists’ palace, the laborers’ tenement, and above all the middle-class villas. Ostentatious furnishings, often of questionable taste, became more widely available during this period. Reform-minded designers through the period, from AWN Pugin and the Gothic Revival, John Ruskin and William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, to Norman Shaw and the Aesthetic Movement all sought to address problems of design and decoration in the home.
This richly illustrated course examines the Victorian and Edwardian home, its architecture, social life and furnishings, and legacy with reference to dwellings both humble and grand. The course also features excursions to houses of the period.
Course Requirements
Students are required to write one paper of 1,500 to 2,000 words and to deliver one oral presentation.
Tutor Biography
Antony Buxton, M.A., is a lecturer on the history of furniture and the domestic interior for the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. He is engaged in research into historic furnishings and the domestic culture of historic homes, and is also a furniture maker, restorer, and conservator.
Tutor Contact Details: Antony.buxton@conted.ox.ac.uk
Field trips
Three field trips to Highclere Castle followed by Hughenden; Linley Sambourne house followed by Leighton House in West London; and Birmingham back-to-backs followed by Whightwick Manor near Wolverhampton.
Suggested Background Reading
Briggs, Asa, A Social History of England, (Penguin Books). [ISBN 0140269541]
Chapter 10
Cooper, Jeremy, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors, (Thames and Hudson). [ISBN 05000280223]
Flanders, Judith, The Victorian House, (Harper Collins) [ISBN 0007131887]
Yarwood, Doreen, English Interiors: A Pictorial Guide and Glossary, (Parkhurst Publications) [ISBN 0718825438] Chapters 9 & 10
Credit and Enrollment Information
X103.9 History
(EDP 284190)