Details

Subject(s)

• Lodging-houses—New York (State)—New York—19th century [Browse]
• Boardinghouses—New York (State)—New York—19th century [Browse]
• New York (N.Y.)—Social life and customs—19th century [Browse]

Related name

• Faflik, David, 1972- [Browse]

Summary note

The American boardinghouse once provided basic domestic shelter and constituted a uniquely modern world view for the first true generation of U.S. city-dwellers. Thomas Butler Gunn's classic 1857 account of urban habitation, The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses, explores the process by which boardinghouse life was translated into a lively urban vernacular. Intimate in its confessional tone, comprehensive in its detail, disarmingly penetrating despite (or perhaps because of) its self-deprecating wit, Physiology is at once an essential introduction to a "lost" world of boarding, even as it comprises an early, engaging, and sophisticated analysis of America's "urban turn" during the decades leading up to the Civil War. In his introduction, David Faflik considers what made Gunn's book a compelling read in the past and how today it can elucidate our understanding of the formation and evolution of urban American life and letters.

Notes

Originally published: New York : Mason Brothers, 1857.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-200).

Language note

English

Contents

• Frontmatter
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses
• Explanatory Notes
• Further Reading

Show 4 more Contents items

ISBN

• 1-281-95878-6
• 9786611958787
• 0-8135-4621-4

OCLC

• 437089286
• 311579270
• 1153460867

Doi

• 10.36019/9780813546216

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