Behind a Georgian Door: Perfect Rooms, Imperfect Lives - Softcover

D'Ecca, Artemesia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908420146 ISBN 13: 9781908420145

Publisher: Phaeton Publishing Limited, 2016

Synopsis

CHRISTMAS 2013 - Herbert Place: A lovingly restored townhouse - on the street where Elizabeth Bowen lived - becomes a testing burden for a young family after the financial crash. GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BED - Upper Pembroke Street: A moment of crisis - and an eighteenth-century bed - bring together an unlikely group in one of Dublin's most familiar Georgian streets. GRACE KELLY'S DRESS - Merrion Square: A famous dress, a spectacular dinner party, and a dining room of family legend and of family tragedy - on the grand Georgian square which Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, Sheridan LeFanu, and Daniel O'Connell once called home.

About this title

About the Author

When Irish author Artemesia D'Ecca went hunting for a Dublin Georgian house she could afford - one in poor condition, and little changed by time - she became familiar with many of the city's famous terraces. By the 21st century, few of those tall houses looked as if they had ever been loved. Some seemed close to collapse. They were built as family houses, but history intervened, and many had spent most of their existence as flats or some sort of rooming house - until modern laws emptied them entirely of residents. In the 1980s and 1990s, the lifetime tenants, with rights and comfortable flats, were forced out. The packed houses where everyone shared a bathroom - havens for the young and the poor - were cleared out later. The Georgian houses she inspected were often good value and had space for a big family, but in general, only artists and moguls have been drawn to them as private houses. Three of the houses she came close to buying have always stayed in her mind - one in Herbert Place, one in Lower Pembroke Street, one in Merrion Square - and became the settings of these stories.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phaeton Publishing Limited
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908420146
• ISBN 13: 9781908420145
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 130