Some time after my wife and I moved into a former Church of England rectory in a village of tranquil anonymity in Norfolk, in the easternmost part of England, I had occasion to go up into the attic to look for the source of a slow but mysterious drip.
An edition of At Home
(2010)
At Home
A Short History of Private Life
1st U.S. ed.
by Bill Bryson
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“Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”
Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.
(front flap)
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Subjects
cosmetics, history of cotton, spinning jenny, corsets, Victorian fashion, nurseries, attics, plum rooms, stairs, wallpaper, paint, bedrooms, bathrooms, dressing rooms, linen, hemp, wool, silk, sumptuary laws, English medieval clothing, wigs, studies, pests, mousetraps, mason jars, disease vectors, rats, mice, bedbugs, bats, locusts, gardens, cement, East India Company, table manners, Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster, Tay Bridge disaster, blackouts, Industrial Revolution, tallow, beeswax, whaling, kerosene, gas lighting, electric lighting, drawing rooms, crop rotation, history of tea, history of coffee, cattle, dining rooms, nutrition, scurvy, beriberi, history of salt, black pepper, spice trade, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, Victorian England, sculleries, larders, domestic workers, slavery, great halls, Volkerwanderung, grubenhaus architecture, food adulteration, food preservation, Wenham Lake Ice Company, clergy, domestic life, Houses, Environmental aspects, Rooms, Dwellings, Psychological aspects, Environmental aspects of Rooms, Psychological aspects of Rooms, Environmental aspects of Dwellings, Psychological aspects of Dwellings, home, mundanity, socialization, introspection, History, Nonfiction, New York Times bestseller, nyt:paperback_nonfiction=2011-10-15, Social life and customs, Social history, Social evolution, Domestic, Social change, Social conditions, Manners and customs, HOUSE & HOME / Reference, HISTORY / Reference, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, Reading Level-Grade 7, Reading Level-Grade 9, Reading Level-Grade 8, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10, Reading Level-Grade 12, Large type books, Households, New York Times reviewed, Arts & Entertainment, Home & Garden, Fictional Works, Home economics, Great britain, social conditionsPeople
Bill Bryson, Lon Don, Thomas John Gordon Marsham, Mrs Anna Maria Thornton, Louisa Beckford, Edward Townsend Stotesbury, George Templeton Strong, Maria Clutterbuck, James Henry Atkinson, Oliver Belmont, David Clark, Harriet Taylor, Ranald Michie, Henry Dreyfuss, Jonathan Franklin, Merlin D. Tuttle, Daniel Edwards, Cyriacus Ahlers, Thomas A. Watson, Sebastiano Serlio, J. Sterling Morton, Liza Picard, Hannah Cullwick, François Lallemand, Johann Philipp Reis, Pitt Rivers, R. E. Crompton, Joseph Aspdin, George Bayldon, Pasqua Rosee, Charles A. R. Campbell, Arthur Munby, Joseph Bazalgette, Isaac Ware, Brian Ayers, John Landis Mason, Richard Morris Hunt, Gordon Childe, Antony Dale, Dr. Richard Russell, Hermann Sprengel, E. V. McCollum, Carol Heaton, Robert Kerr, Philip Henry Gosse, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William G. Blauvelt, Dennis Pogue, William Greenwell, John Fraser, Addison Mizner, Elias Howe, William Grove, Emily Cockayne, Ötzi, Bryan Donkin, Hamish Hamilton, Lords Carlisle, Alice Vanderbilt, Nicolas-François Appert, Annie Kaplan, Josiah Wedgwood III, King George IV, Joseph Swan, Judith Flanders, Isabella Beeton, Stratton Strawless, George Neville, Frederick Charrington, Humphry Clinker, Calvert Vaux, David Macpherson, Joseph Addison, E. L. Drake, William Beckford, Baker Brown, Samuel Rogers, Silbury Hill, John Vanbrugh, Daniel Pincot, Eleanor Stanley, Edmund Cartwright, Sutton Courtenay, Peter Willis, John Claudius Loudon, Henry Cartwright, Mary Mercer, James M. Clinton, Gardiner Hubbard, Jane Sotworth, Mark Girouard, Frank Buckland, James Barclay, Feargus O'Connor, Jane Grenville, Edward Tull, Susan Stein, George Pitt, Matthew Digby Wyatt, James Hargreaves, Witold Rybczynski, Eleanor Coade, Juliet Gardiner, Andrew Mellon, J. Alfred Gotch, Thomas Barnardo, Jane Webb, Robert Smythson, Edwin Chadwick, Vere Gordon Childe, Dr George C. Menzies, Henry Cavendish, Edmund Antrobus, Puloroon, Frédéric Bartholdi, Frederick Hale Holmes, Eva Stotesbury, Charles Wentworth Dilke, George S. Rasmussen, Wilson Mizner, Nancy Jones, Lord Scarborough, Simon Jenkins, William K. Vanderbilt, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Blanchard Jerrold, Skara Brae, Baron Walsingham, John Harington, Commodore Vanderbilt, Robert Marsham, Nathaniel Wyeth, James Mellaart, Duke of Marlborough, Dr Charles P. Gerba, Abraham Gesner, Giovanni Aldini, Edwin Drake, John Farquhar, Thomas Drummond, Aston Clinton, Uriah Phillips Levy, James Woodforde, Cyrus McCormick, John Michell, John Bennet Lawes, Duc de Malakoff, Caroline of Anspach, Robert Fortune, A. Graham Bell, Earl of Carlisle, Casimir Funk, Emma Wedgwood, Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Stotesbury, Orson Fowler, Peter Laslett, Ami Argand, Lord Burlington, Bob Self, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Effie Ruskin, Charlotte Wedgwood, John Frere, Charles Langton, Friedrich Hoffmann, George Peabody, John Harden, Heinrich Hoffmann, John A. Templer, Karl Scheele, Robert Southey, George Bissell, Lancelot Brown, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Crapper, Edmond Halley, Richard Arkwright, Frederick Law OlmstedPlaces
Monticello, Mount Vernon, Biltmore mansion, North Carolina, Chrysler Building, Norfolk, England, Crystal Palace, Skara Brae, Scotland, Chicago, United States, Great Britain, Eerie Canal, Great Lakes, New York, Eiffel Tower, LondonTimes
1851, 19th century, Age of Exploration, 1825, 1850, 1856, 1930, Gilded Age, 17th century, 1800sShowing 10 featured editions. View all 31 editions?
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01
Een huis vol: Een kleine geschiedenis van het dagelijks leven
2020, Olympus
Paperback
in /languages/dut
- Tiende druk
9046705870 9789046705872
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03
At home: a short history of private life
2016, Black Swan
Paperback
in /languages/eng
- Black Swan edition reissued (4)
178416187X 9781784161873
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At Home: A Short History of Private Life
2011-10, Anchor Books
Paperback
in /languages/eng
- First Anchor Books Edition (1)
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05
At home: A Short History of Private Life
2011, Black Swan
Paperback
in /languages/eng
- Black Swan edition (5)
0552772550 9780552772556
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06
At Home: A short history of private life
2011, Black Swan
paperback
in /languages/eng
- Black Swan edition (1)
0552777358 9780552777353
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07
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
2010, Doubleday
hardcover
in /languages/eng
- printing (1)
0385608276 9780385608275
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08
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
2010, Doubleday
Hardcover
in /languages/eng
- 1st U.S. ed.
0767919386 9780767919388
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10
At home: a short history of private life
2010, Doubleday
Hardcover
in /languages/eng
- First United States Edition (1)
0767919386 9780767919388
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Book Details
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. [455]-475) and index.
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Work Description
At Home: A Short History of Private Life is a history of domestic life written by Bill Bryson. It was published in May 2010. The book covers topics of the commerce, architecture, technology and geography that have shaped homes into what they are today, told through a series of "tours" through Bryson's Norfolk rectory that quickly digress into the history of each particular room.
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Links outside Open Library
- At Home: A Short History of Private Life - Wikipedia
- At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson | Book review ...
- If Walls Could Talk
- At Bryson's House, 'Home' Is Where The History Is : NPR
- Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life Is a Fascinating ...
- New York Times review
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- Created November 30, 2010
- 24 revisions
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| June 12, 2025 | Edited by Drini | Add TOC from Tocky |
| May 29, 2019 | Edited by Lisa | |
| May 29, 2019 | Edited by Lisa | Added new cover |
| May 29, 2019 | Edited by Lisa | Moved edition to primary work. |
| November 30, 2010 | Created by ImportBot | initial import |