Living Space in Fact and Fiction

Book excerpt: First published in 1989, Living Space in Fact and Fiction explores the house both in the ‘real’ world of the architect and the built environment, and in the fictional world of the novelist. The role of the house, in fact and fiction, tells us much about the space we live in, while the work of contemporary architects and designers illuminates aspects of the novelist’s art. Profusely illustrated, Living Space takes the history of the house from the Georgian world of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela through the works of novelists such as Jane Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, and Henry James, up to 1914, when the notion of the house changes its nature. Philippa Tristram is concerned not only with the structure and organization of the house, but with the inner life lived within it. She shows how the subconscious life of the family was transformed over a century and a half, revealed in the shape and structure of the home. This book will be of interest to students of literature, history and architecture.