ABSTRACT
It is at home that parents and children, brothers and sisters mingle in the sweet fellowship of domestic bliss. Few will read [Carey's] work without feeling that the characters have been drawn from life—fortunately for us there are few homes which have not an Aunt Milly ever ready to cheer and comfort. Many Victorian and Edwardian accounts of home and family life, whether fictional or non-fictional, employ the same small range of referents, represented in fairly predictable configurations. By contrast, social reporting in the same period, structured by a commitment to first-hand evidence, case-studies and statistical data, frequently portrays a more fragmented and contradictory picture of home life. The essential features of Victorian and Edwardian bourgeois domesticity are to be found in their purest form in many non-fictional didactic texts of the day, particularly in household manuals and books of advice for women.
