Examines the Reading Room of the British Museum using documentary, theoretical, historical, and literary sources Roomscape explores a specific site - the Reading Room of the British Museum - as a space of imaginative potential in relation to the emergence of modern women writers in Victorian and early twentieth-century London. Drawing on archival materials, Roomscape is the first study to integrate documentary, historical, and literary sources to examine the significance of this space and its resources for women who wrote translations, poetry, and fiction. This book challenges an assessment of the Reading Room of the British Museum as a bastion of class and gender privilege, an image established by Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Roomscape also questions the value of privacy and autonomy in constructions of female authorship. Rather than viewing reading and writing as solitary, Roomscape investigates the public, social, and spatial dimensions of literary production. The implications of this study reach into the current digital era and its transformations of practices of reading, writing, and archiving. Along with an appendix of notable readers at the British Museum from the last two centuries, the book contributes to scholarship on George Eliot, Amy Levy, Eleanor Marx, Clementina Black, Constance Black Garnett, Christina Rossetti, Mathilde Blind, and Virginia Woolf.

* 115 new images and 175 images from the earlier volume completely digitally remastered* A total of 290 images as compared to 225 in the 1993 edition* A completely new layout* All new and expanded captions * A new section of 14 sketches, printed on special paper* An index for both houses and names* Edited by Francesca Simone, Mongiardino's niece * A preface by the renowned art historian, Giovanni Agosti ".....Mongiardino still elicits instant reverence. With his alchemic blurring of eras, the sheer scope and commitment of his massive projects and insistence on valuing ambiance above so-called authenticity, he attained mythic stature." - The New York Times Style Magazine, April 6, 2016 (from a sixteen-page full-color cover story.) The glorious, deft hand of design maestro and magician Renzo Mongiardino sparkles in this new edition of the 1993 classic Roomscape, now bought by collectors for hundreds of dollars. From elegant palazzo residences to magnificent city apartments, this edition is a surpassing revisit of Mongiardino's work as told by the architect himself, and will be much coveted by devotees and new admirers alike.

Bold and manageable, Mark Lewison's What Would You Do With This Room? My 10 Foolproof Commandments to Great Interior Design, written by Sherri Houtz with John R. Haigh, is a gem of instruction to design types who have the heart to do-it-themselves, but need a little direction. In the case of this interior design book that blends common sense with savoir-faire, Mark's mantra is, "keep it simple, keep it simple, keep it simple!" It takes effort to execute design plans, but with these easy to use tools and insights designing rooms is a breeze. From keeping one's lifestyle in mind to following fashion, and from personalizing your home's look and feel to being fearless, this style guide is the perfect missive for new homebuyers and novice designers. First detailing each of his ten design commandments, Lewison follows by demonstrating how readers can synthesize the commandments to execute designs, making a room "pop" with fun and imagination. -- www.booksurge.com.

This volume charts the rise of professional women writers across diverse fields of intellectual enquiry and through different modes of writing in the period immediately before and during the reign of Queen Victoria. It demonstrates how, between 1830 and 1880, the woman writer became an agent of cultural formation and contestation, appealing to and enabling the growth of female readership while issuing a challenge to the authority of male writers and critics. Of especial importance were changing definitions of marriage, family and nation, of class, and of morality as well as new conceptions of sexuality and gender, and of sympathy and sensation. The result is a richly textured account of a radical and complex process of feminization whereby formal innovations in the different modes of writing by women became central to the aesthetic, social, and political formation of British culture and society in the nineteenth century.