Houses are ubiquitous in life-writing, and in many other kinds of writing, notes editor Hermione Lee in her introduction to this thoughtful collection of essays. Houses, their lives and afterlives, what they mean to their owners and inhabitants, what it means to be un-housed and looking at houses from the outside in--these essays ask readers to reflect on their own lives by considering these structures more fully.
This collection follows a conference titled "The Lives of Houses," held at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing in 2017. It is broadly arranged in seven sections, which makes it easy to read the 23 essays in order or skip around. Whether considering the lives and homes of artists and writers, houses that have left an impact on history, or how history is impressed upon these structures, the range of disciplines includes perspectives from writers, curators, poets, literary critics, historians, archeologists and others. Essayists include editor Hermione Lee, as well as notable names such as Julian Barnes, R.F. Foster and Jenny Uglow. Accessible, though with an obvious intellectual bent, Lives of Houses does not try to really answer the question of what houses mean to the people who live in them, but rather, calls readers to consider more broadly why these structures have such a hold--both physically and in how they frame the concept of home. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer