Intimate Interiors

This book considers various forms of intimate spaces in the global 18th century to address themes of privacy, informality, domesticity, gender, power, authority, and sociability across different cultures and sites.

Available as an Open Access publication, Intimate Interiors explores how a growing desire for individual expression, the concealment of domestic labor and enslavement, and an increasing appetite for comfort and solace reshaped eighteenth-century interiors. By examining architectural, visual, and material culture, the book foregrounds the interconnected roles of intimacy, privacy, informality, and sociability in shaping the period’s increasingly specialized domestic spaces.

Across eleven innovative chapters that explore issues of gender, politics, travel, exoticism, imperialism, sensorial experiences, identity, interiority, and modernity, this volume demonstrates how intimacy was a fundamental goal in the planning of private quarters. In doing so, the political nature of private spaces is uncovered, whilst highlighting the contradictions and complexities of these highly performative “private” interiors. Employing distinct methodological perspectives across various geographical sites, from Turkey to Versailles, Britain to Benin, Intimate Interiors draws as-yet untraced connections between Enlightenment Europe, imperial outposts, and major metropolitan centers across the globe.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Vanderbilt University.