Colonies at Home: Loudon's Encyclopaedia, and the architecture of forming the self

In the early nineteenth century, the small house in its own garden formed a crucial image of agricultural reform in Britain and in the aspirations of those leaving for North America and Australasia. The material and social technologies of the ‘cottage’ became not only equipment for the colonial enterprise, but a kind of colonization of the home by a new kind of family. These issues are apparent in J. C. Loudon'sEncyclopaediawhere the whole gamut of architecture is re-examined as a subject of interest to agricultural reformers, colonists, democrats and homemakers, especially women.