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Michael McKeon. The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005. xxvii + 873 pages.
Michael McKeon has recently published three large volumes with the Johns Hopkins University Press: a brilliantly edited critical anthology, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach (2000), which has gone a long way in righting the balance between our contemporary fascination with structural-narratological issues and the traditional concerns of genre theory; the 15th anniversary edition of his benchmark study, The Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740 (2002); and now The secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. The present volume is by far the largest of the trio: 873 pages, 120 pages of erudite notes, and 94 shrewdly chosen plates and other illustrations. It weighs in at 3 1/4 pounds. The book is as capacious in its scope as in its physical dimensions. McKeon observes that the title of the book states its central concerns "in ascending order of generality." Thus his broadest interest "lies in the comprehensive division of knowledge...