Fine in Fine dust jacket; The dust jacket is protected by a Brodart mylar cover. Most books shipped within 24 hours. ; B&W Illustrations; 8vo.; 233 pages; 0300050720. First Edition. Binding is Hardcover.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: MADE TO PLAY HOUSE: DOLLS AND THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF AMERICAN GIRLHOOD, 1830-1930
Publisher: New Haven Yale University Press 1993.
Publication Date: 1993
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0300050720
ISBN 13: 9780300050721
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition
Printing: 1st Printing
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

Dolls have long been perceived as symbols of domesticity, maternity, and materialism, designed by men and loved by girls who wanted to "play house." In this engagingly written and illustrated social history of the American doll industry, Miriam Formanek-Brunell shows that this has not always been the case. Drawing on a wide variety of contemporary sources - including popular magazines advertising, autobiographies, juvenile literature, patents, photographs, and the dolls themselves - Formanek-Brunell traces the history of the doll industry back to its beginnings, a time when American men, women, and girls each claimed the right to construct dolls and gender.
Formanek-Brunell describes how dolls and doll play changed over time: antebellum rag dolls taught sewing skills; Gilded Age fashion dolls inculcated formal social rituals; Progressive Era dolls promoted health and active play; and the realistic baby dolls of the 1920s fostered girls' maternal impulses. She discusses how the aesthetic values and business methods of women dollmakers differed from those of their male counterpart, and she describes, for example, Martha Chase, who made America's first soft, sanitary cloth dolls, and Rose O'Neill, inventor of the kewpie doll. According to Formanek-Brunell, although American businessmen ultimately dominated the industry with dolls they marketed as symbols of an idealized feminine domesticity, business-women presented an alternative vision of gender for both girls and boys through a variety of dolls they manufactured themselves.

About the Author

Miriam Formanek-Brunell is visiting research scholar at the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College.

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Established in 1984, Black Swan Books is housed in building constructed in 1912. Our 3,000 square feet of floor space is filled with well organized shelves devoted to Kentuckiana, Horses, Military History, Literature, Poetry,Art, Americana, European and British History and Children's books etc. Our books are selected for condition as well as content. Many of our titles reflect the fact that we are located only a couple of blocks from the University of Kentucky. Our shop is pictured in Southern Writers, has been written up on the New York Times blog. and was used in a program produced for National Public Television. We have hosted readings as well as book signings of many regional authors, including Wendell Berry (of whom we have a large inventory)& Bobbie Ann Mason. E-mail us to be placed on our mailing list.

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Black Swan Books, Inc.
505 E. Maxwell Street, Lexington, KY, 40502, U.S.A.

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