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Book Cover
Book
Author Timms, Peter, 1948-

Title Private lives : Australians at home since federation / Peter Timms
Published Carlton, Vic. : Melbourne University Publishing, 2008

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  643.0994 Tim/Pla  AVAILABLE
Description xi, 259 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm
regular print
Series Miegunyah volumes, second numbered series ; no. 107
Miegunyah Press series. Series 2 ; no. 107
Contents Contents: 1 Fortress or Fishbowl -- 2 The Border Zones -- 3 Once Inside -- 4 Come into the Parlour -- 5 May I Leave the Table? -- 6 The Heart of the Home -- 7 Go to your Room -- 8 The Facilities -- 9 The Worst Day of the Week -- Conclusion
Summary Summary: "In Private Lives: Australians at Home since Federation, Peter Timms traces the revolutionary changes that have transformed domestic life over the past hundred years or so. Privacy, security, comfort and happiness have always been the ideals people have striven for. Yet what we think they are today, and the ways we try to achieve them, would have bewildered our grandparents. Beginning at the front door, Timms explores the suburban dwelling room by room, tracing the evolution of its furnishings and fittings, the technological and social developments affecting its layout and design, and the many ways people have organised their work and leisure activities, be it in a Kings Cross flat in the thirties or an outer-suburban McMansion today. Five different kitchens are carefully reconstructed, from 1910 to 2007, to map the development of cooking equipment, the rituals of dining, and the revolution in women's work schedules. In the bedroom, Timms looks at everything from mattress fillings and the symbolic role of the bed to changing sex-roles and child-rearing practices. The labour involved in doing laundry a hundred years ago is described in all its hair-raising detail. Plumbing, he says, more than electricity, television or computers, is the most important technological advance of the past two-hundred years. Witty, irreverent and inventive, full of fascinating information and insight, Private Lives is a sympathetic, but not uncritical, look inside the suburban house that helps to explain why we live the way we do."--Publisher description
Analysis Interior decoration
Housing
Social conditions
Social customs
National characteristics
History
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 244-247) and index
Subject Interior decoration -- Australia -- History -- 20th century.
Australians -- Dwellings -- History.
Architecture, Domestic -- Australia -- 20th century.
House furnishings -- Australia -- History -- 20th century.
Household appliances -- Australia -- History -- 20th century.
National characteristics, Australian.
Advertising -- House furnishings -- Social aspects -- Australia.
SUBJECT Australia -- Social life and customs http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114315 -- 2001-
Australia -- Description and travel. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85009579
Australia -- Social life and customs http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114315 -- 21st century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2002012478
Australia -- Social life and customs http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114315 -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2002012476
Genre/Form History.
LC no. 2008425702
ISBN 9780522855029 paperback
Other Titles Australians at home since Federation