The Spencers of Amberson Avenue - (Regional) by Ethel Spencer (Paperback)

About the Book

This memoir introduces the family of Charles Hart Spencer and his wife Mary Acheson: seven children born between 1884 and 1895. It also introduces a large Victorian house in Shadyside (a Pittsburgh neighborhood) and a middle-class way of life at the turn of the century and includes family photographs taken by Mr. Spencer, who was a talented amateur photographer.

Book Synopsis

This memoir introduces the family of Charles Hart Spencer and his wife Mary Acheson: seven children born between 1884 and 1895. In a large Victorian house in Shadyside, an affluent Pittsburgh neighborhood, the family begins a middle-class way of life at the turn of the century. Mr. Spencer, who worked--not very happily--for Henry Clay Frick, was one of the growing number of middle-management employees in American industrial cities in the 1880s and 1890s. His income, which supported his family of nine, a cook, two regular nurses, and at times a wet nurse and her baby, guaranteed a comfortable life but not a luxurious one. The Spencers represent a class that "too often stands silent or stereotyped as we rush forward toward the greater glamour of the robber barons or their immigrant workers." Through the eyes of Ethel Spencer, the third daughter, the reader is led through the routine of everyday life in the Spencer household: school, play, church on Sundays, illness, family celebrations, and vacations. Ethel was an observant child, with little sentimentality, and she wrote her memoir in later life as a professor of English at Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University. The Spencers of Amberson Avenue offers a compelling account of middle-class Pittsburgh urban life. The book is richly illustrated with family photographs taken by Charles Spencer, who was a talented amateur photographer.

Review Quotes

[The book] provides a detailed window into a time when horses pulled delivery wagons down Shadyside's still-unpaved streets. The children's father, who worked for Frick Coke, was a talented amateur photographer whose pictures add glimpses of what life was like for an upper-middle-class family at the turn of the last century.-- "Pittsburgh Magazine"

Her story is readable because it bears the stamp of authenticity.-- "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"

Spencer provides the twentieth-century reader with insights into the process of aging, the daily round of life for members of the middle class, the operation of a household, and the impact of spatial arrangements upon family relations.-- "Choice"

Spencer uses a clear, unpretentious, unsentimental prose to describe her childhood home, neighborhood, relatives, servants, special occasions, and details of daily life. The book is especially good for its depictions of domestic feminism, the mother's role, and the education of girls.-- "Library Journal"

About the Author

Michael P. Weber and Peter N. Stearns, who edited the memoir and wrote the introduction, are historians in the Department of History and Philosophy, Carnegie-Mellon University.