To Make a House a Home:: Four Generations of American Women and the Houses They Lived in

Jane Davison's daughter Lesley has undertaken a labor of love in refurbishing and reissuing her mother's last book, originally published in 1980 as Fall of a Doll's House. Jane Davison, wife of poet Peter Davison, wrote--just before her premature death at age 49--what was then hailed as a classic history of the love-hate relationship between the American housewife and her place of residence. The changes in household management between 1900 and 1960 make interesting reading, especially the profound transformation brought about by the substitution of the refrigerator and the clothes washer for the previously ubiquitous and hard-to-manage servants. The more recent events covered here like women's liberation and the arrival of the perennial question ``What do you do?''--Answer ``Nothing. I'm just a housewife.''--seem dated. Lesley Davison's additions do not stand up to her mother's original. The puzzling title change will annoy those who fail to realize this is essentially a reissue with the addition of wonderful contemporary illustrations and photographs. However, the Davisons' book is a mine of information for the social historian and the culturally curious. Photos. (May)