Gentle Windows

Homes of the Female Imagination

Blending memoir, history and cultural criticism, Gentle Windows explores the homes and spaces of single women as expressions of identity rather than expectation. Alice Maddicott draws on family history, 'spinsters' from history and women artists to examine what women’s spaces reveal when freed from conventional social and family pressures.

What kind of homes and work spaces do women make as expressions of who they are, when able to live alone? An immersive, engaging and evocative journey through research, travel and family memoir, Gentle Windows explores how women create and curate the spaces around theme when free of societal and familial expectations?

In her first book, Tender Maps, Alice Maddicott considered travel as a search for feeling and atmosphere. Returning to the home, Gentle Windows blends social history with family history, art with literature to explore what women’s spaces look like, without the conventional pressures of family – and what this tells us about society. Alice’s grandmother - swimmer, actress and orphan - was raised communally by women and as Alice retraces her grandmother's steps through the Twentieth Century she encounters A La Ronde, a 16-sided cottage built by two sisters after a Grand Tour of Europe and bequeathed for the use of single women alone. She considers other artists, outsiders and pioneers, through history, like Ithell Colquhoun, Elsie de Wolfe and Hope Bourne. She takes us back to meet Manhattan interior designers at the turn of the century to as well as teenage girls painting murals in Paris and we travel through cities and wild landscapes to meet women living alone in attics, cottages, caravans and studios - from Scotland to Devon, Paris to New York.

With curiosity, playfulness and honesty Maddicott opens the window to the joys & possibilities of unconvential living.

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK as soon as stock is available.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-7 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 30 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.