At home Book

At Home invites the reader into the early American home to learn firsthand what it was like to live in and manage a house before electric lighting, central heating, and modern medicine. Drawing on diaries, letters, household inventories, and novels, Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett offers a richly documented analysis of early American middle-class home life.

Handsomely illustrated with period paintings, drawings, and prints, At Home takes us from the parlor through to the bedchamber, portraying families gathered around a candlelit table, roaring kitchen fires used both to cook and to heat, and a weekly laundry without the benefit of washing machines. Readers will be both fascinated and charmed by this revealing glimpse of a once-familiar way of life.

Early American home and family life are revealed and described in this richly documented book. 195 illustraions, 101 in full color, 304 pages, 8-1/2 x 10-1/2"