Home Comfort has a lot of good information in it. Unfortunately, it also reads like a rough draft. Hardyment seems to have decided on an organizational structure for the book, written her chapters, and then completely ignored how the actual content of those chapters should have reshaped her narrative.

Of course, this is the same author who fails time and time again to define obscure domestic terms and sprinkles the dates of her references with a stingy, arbitrary hand. Without footnotes or anything more precise than a general bibliography—and given Hardyment's penchant for jumping from century to century in the same paragraph—piecing together a chronology of domestic developments was like putting my brain through a laundry mangle.

And the descriptions of said domestic developments? They made little to no sense until the fourth or fifth reading, and most of the time, they didn't match up with any of the chosen photographs or illustrations. And if you thought those disconnected photographs and illustrations would have helpful captions, expanding upon the text—well. Why create helpful captions when you can cut and paste a vague sentence from a nearby paragraph instead?

And then there's the missing commas and incorrect page references....

If you decide to read this book, you might consider seeking a solid chronological grounding of basic home types first (something like Rybczynski's Home: A Short History of an Idea would work), and reading chapters 1, 10, and 11, with their explanation of household infrastructure, before any of the others ought to help with the brain-mangling frustration. Even so, a soothing pot of tea—or shot of bourbon—would not go amiss.

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What a bloody wonderful book! One of the best resources a writer can have! ( )

Wonderful photos and excellent information: a reference for anyone writing about the rich and powerful who have servants for just every duty and chore in a stately home. ( )