In her book The Promise of the Suburbs, Sarah Bilston successfully charts the most unlikely itinerary of all: from suburbia as “Horror” (in the words of E. M. Forster) to a positive place where women can discover a new identity. This is a feminist interpretation of the suburbs, a fact only fully revealed at the very end of the book, where Bilston states, “Literary critical readings of the suburbs focus almost always on texts written by male cosmopolitan writers, like Gissing, Doyle, Wells, Bennett, and Crosland . . . the apparent femaleness of the suburbs strongly reinforced its association with the trivial, the small-minded, the petty, and the boring—a life ‘as dull a life as any man imagined’ as Crane put it” (211).

I found Bilston's introduction fascinating. She eloquently brings together many ideas and examples of the ways in which the suburbs have been discussed, then and now. Bilston is at pains to demonstrate that “the suburbs were remarkably diverse” (9), a fact often obscured by the cliché of the anonymous, unremarkable suburb. She also charts the human stereotypes associated with suburbia—cultured, Philistines, worthy, unworthy, “people with exquisite sensibility,” “the masses” (11–12).

The word suburb derives from the Latin suburbium, but Bilston is more concerned with the novelty of the concept of the suburbs in Victorian times: “the development of a new space, or more properly a space that expressly called into question the binary of country and city that had structured life and ways of thinking about the human experience of modernity for centuries” (5).

Bilston employs a range of literature, including the new how-to manuals on caring for homes and gardens, as well as more conventional literature on homes, such as Charles Dickens (29–30) or Edward Bulwer-Lytton (38–45). Focusing on the career of the influential garden designer J. C. Loudon (1783–1843), Bilston notes the shift of the suburb from “a space of bustling modernity” to a “self-contained world” (36). Toward the end of his life, Loudon moved away from the “comforting huddle of a village circle” to the “confines of a single private house” (35). In literature, too, Bilston traces the various types of suburban plots, including those favored by male authors, in which “a male hero stumbles by accident into the suburbs, is ensnared by a woman and must find his way out” (55). Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) is a case in point—his works The Disowned (1829) and Night and Morning (1841) are discussed in some detail and serve to contrast the male view on suburbia with that of the women the book privileges. There is some imbalance in this determinedly feminist approach. There is little room here for the “fallen” women through prostitution or the “mistresses” hidden in the suburbs, reasonably well documented in St John's Wood; for example see Cottages and Villas (2010), 194–202.

Bilston uses a large range of sources, but too often, without dates or context. Victorian authors are mixed with contemporary commentators and this makes it difficult to disentangle the sources. For instance, Raymond Williams is quoted, but no mention is made of his cult status as author of The Country and the City (1973) (4). The Builder's Practical Director (1855) is mentioned three times without date. As several of its designs are discussed, it is important to know when they were conceived.

I was troubled, too, by inaccuracies in the historical background. Bilston focuses on an 1826 copy of the Times as the starting point of the “desirable suburban residences” (5) but does not situate it in its wider historical context. In fact, St John's Wood was the earliest garden suburb in London; its first surviving development plan dates back to 1794. The advertisement that accompanied the plan is entirely clear about the new type of houses being proposed: “Residences of such novel description, as will unite the beauty and pleasure of a Country-House, with the convenience and advantage of a town one,” also highlighting the “amplitude of Ground, for Offices and Gardens” (Cottages and Villas, 69) This text also spells out the creation of “respectable Neighbourhoods.”

Bilston is aware of St John's Wood but not of its significance. It is discussed in note 9 of the introduction, although she quotes from a 1993 publication that accredits an inaccurate starting development date of 1815. These faulty premises encourage the old incorrect clichés: “Bedford Park, the first speculatively built garden suburb” (7) or “[J. C.] Loudon built his house . . . in 1825 and the home is often credited as the building that popularized the ‘semi’ in Victorian London” (25). In fact, the 1794 plan of St John's Wood is made up almost entirely of semidetached houses, and there are many more examples earlier than 1825 in St John's Wood and elsewhere.

For me, the most riveting chapter is toward the end of the book: “The Quintessence of the Suburban,” which dissects how “Jane Ellen Panton and Julia Frankau speak of Suburbia” (178). Bilston sets out a remarkable clash of diametrically opposed views about suburban living, fueled by dramatic private lives, multiple-personality syndrome, gender reassignment, and scandalous affairs. Panton lived in Shortlands near Bromley, and none of her adventures are mentioned in the standard histories of this neighborhood. Frankau lived in Bayswater and Maida Vale; both women moved in similar circles and both were authors and regular contributors to the same magazine. But while Frankau was Jewish—and this is an important factor—Panton was anti-Semitic; and while Panton found peace in Shortlands, Frankau favored cosmopolitan living in Mayfair and Belgravia. These strong remarkable women are somehow out of step with Bilston's gently paced book, which discusses through painstaking text analysis the life of ordinary Victorian women. The Promise of the Suburbs is not a feminist manifesto with a strong argument driving all its parts; its structure echoes the meandering path of life itself with periods of stagnation, followed by breakthroughs.

Despite its oversights and partisan approach, there is enough new and stimulating material in this book to make it a worthwhile read.