Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life (Gender and Culture Series)

Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life offers a bold new assessment of the role of the domestic sphere in modernist literature, architecture, and design. Elegantly synthesizing modernist literature with architectural plans, room designs, and decorative art, Victoria Rosner's work explores the collaborations among modern British writers, interior designers, and architects in redefining the form, function, and meaning of middle-class private life. Drawing on a host of previously unexamined archival sources and works by figures such as E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler, and Virginia Woolf, Rosner highlights the participation of modernist literature in the creation of an experimental, embodied, and unstructured private life, which we continue to characterize as "modern." "Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life traces the unexpected ways in which certain ideas, motifs, and techniques migrated among different art forms in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England, finding related expression in literature, art, interior design, and architecture. British modernist writers, together with artists, architects, and designers were collectively engaged in a far-reaching and multilayered project to redefine the form and meaning of middle-class domesticity and to rewrite the relationship between gender and space. Unraveling the apparent paradox of modernist domesticity, Victoria Rosner tells the story of the creation of an experimental, unstructured, and embodied kind of private life, the kind of life we still call "modern."" In the late 19th century the conventions of domesticity came under scrutiny by British writers & others intent on bringing a modern spirit into the home. Rosner reveals the connections between those who elegantly synthesized modernist literature with architetcural plans, room designs, & decorative art In the late nineteenth century the conventions of Victorian domesticity came under scrutiny by British writers, designers, artists, and architects intent on bringing a modern spirit into the home. Seeking to redefine the spaces of middle-class private life, figures such as E. M.