Dwelling(s) in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

This interdisciplinary volume explores the physicality and symbolism of Irish dwellings, and the home as a place of repose, exercise, and work. It focuses on dwelling spaces that were especially vulnerable to economic forces, such as the homes of the urban and rural poor, and the rising urban/suburban middle class.

Format: Unspecified
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 01 November 2023
Publisher: Liverpool University Press

In the nineteenth century, what did it mean to have an 'Irish dwelling'? How did the Irish people write about, think about, visually represent, or imagine what constituted home? This interdisciplinary volume, showcasing research from scholars based in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and further afield, aims to answer these questions by exploring the physicality and symbolism of Irish dwellings and the home as a place of repose, exercise, and work.

Using a range of methodological approaches, including history, folklore, and literature, this volume offers new perspectives on the material culture of home, fictionalized homes, social housing schemes, suburban living spaces, home and social mobility, institutional living, migration, and memories of the home-house, and gender and eviction.

Rather than focusing on the Big House, which has already received considerable scholarly attention, this volume foregrounds dwelling spaces that were especially vulnerable to economic forces: the homes of the urban and rural poor. Additionally, the book acknowledges the importance to nineteenth-century Ireland of a class that has arguably received even less attention in Irish scholarship than the poor, a rising urban/suburban middle class, exploring their impact on housing and on cultural and leisure activities.

An Open Access version of Christopher Cusack's chapter, "Back into the old homestead: The Irish Cottage in Irish-American Fiction, 861–1910," will be made available on publication.

Weight: 624g
Dimension: 161 x 242 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781802078787