From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America

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Syracuse University Press, Sep 1, 2000 - Social Science - 358 pages
Priscilla J. Brewer examines the development and history of the first American appliance—the cast iron stove—that created a quiet, but culturally contested transformation of domestic life and sparked many important debates about the role of women, industrialization, the definition of social class, and the development of a consumer economy. Brewer explores the shift from fireplaces to stoves for cooking and heating in American homes, and sheds new light on the supposedly "separate spheres" of home and world of nineteenth- century America. She also considers the changing responses to technological development, the emergence of a consumption ethic, and the attempt to define and preserve distinct Anglo-American middle class culture. There are few works that treat this significant subject, and Brewer covers impressive new ground. Extensively documented—based on letters, diaries, probate inventories, census records, sales figures, advertisements, fiction, and advice literature-this book will be valuable to scholars of American history and women's studies.
 

Contents

Good Living for Those That Love Good Fires
1
So Much of the Comfort of Our Lives Depends on Fire
15
The Art of Economizing Fuel
38
A Great Variety of Stoves Just Received
63
Near a Stove the Heart Builds No Altars
95
We Have Got a Very Good Cooking Stove
118
This Necessary EvilThe Cooking Stove
153
The Disappearing Kitchen Range
191
A Nice Clean Fire Whenever Needed
221
Rediscovering the Woodbuming Cookstove
241
Notes
261
Bibliography
303
Index
325
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About the author (2000)

Priscilla J. Brewer is associate professor of American studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa. She is the author of Shaker Communities, Shaker Lives, and numerous articles.

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