A Doll's House
Original manuscript cover page, 1879
Written by	Henrik Ibsen
Characters	Nora Torvald Helmer Krogstad Mrs. Linde Dr. Rank Children Anne-Marie
Mute	Nora's Father
Date premiered	21 December 1879 (1879-12-21)
Place premiered	Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark
Original language	Norwegian
Subject	The feminist awakening of a good middle-class wife and mother.
Genre	Naturalistic / realistic problem play Modern tragedy
Setting	The home of the Helmer family in an unspecified Norwegian town or city, circa 1879.
IBDB profile
IOBDB profile

A Doll's House (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by the playwright Henrik Ibsen.^[1] It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.^[2]

The play was controversial when first published, as it is sharply critical of 19th century marriage norms.^[3] Michael Meyer argues that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person."^[4] In a speech given to the Norwegian Women's Rights League in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity."^[5] The Swedish playwright August Strindberg attacked the play in his volume of short stories Getting Married (1884).^[6]

UNESCO inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value.^[7]

Synopsis[link]

Act one[link]

A Doll's House opens as Nora Helmer returns from Christmas shopping. Her husband Torvald comes out of his study to banter with her. They discuss how their finances will improve now that Torvald has a new job as the vice president of the bank. Torvald expresses his horror of debt. Nora behaves childishly and he enjoys treating her like a child to be instructed and indulged.

Soon an old friend of Nora's, Christine Linde, arrives. She is a childless widow who is moving back to the city. Her husband left her no money, so she has tried different kinds of work, and now hopes to find some work that is not too strenuous. Nora confides to Christine that she once secretly borrowed money from a disgraced lawyer, Nils Krogstad, to save Torvald's life when he was very ill, but she has not told him in order to protect his pride. She told everyone that the money came from her father, who died at about the same time. She has been repaying the debt from her housekeeping budget, and also from some work she got copying papers by hand, which she did secretly in her room, and took pride in her ability to earn money "as if she were a man." Torvald's new job promises to finally liberate her from this debt.

Nora asks Torvald to give Christine a position as a secretary in the bank, and he agrees, as she has experience in bookkeeping. They leave the house together.

Krogstad arrives and tells Nora that he is worried he will be fired. He asks her to help him keep his job and says that he will fight desperately to keep it. Nora is reluctant to commit to helping him, so Krogstad reveals that he knows she committed forgery on the bond she signed for her loan from him. As a woman, she needed an adult male co-signer, so she said she would have her father do so. However the signature is dated three days after his death, which suggests that it is a forgery. Nora admits that she did forge the signature, so as to spare her dying father further worry about her (she was pregnant, poor, and had a seriously ill husband). Krogstad explains that the forgery betrayed his trust and is also a serious crime. If he told others about it, her reputation would be ruined, as was his after a similar "indiscretion," even though he was never prosecuted. He implies that what he did was in order to provide for his sick wife, who later died.

Act two[link]

Christine arrives to help Nora repair a dress for a costume party she and Torvald are going to the next day. Then Torvald comes home from the bank and Nora pleads with him to reinstate Krogstad at the bank. She claims she is worried that Krogstad will publish libelous articles about Torvald and ruin his career. Torvald dismisses her fears and explains that although Krogstad is a good worker and seems to have turned his life around, he insists on firing him because Krogstad is not deferential enough to him in front of other bank personnel. Torvald goes into his study to do some work.

Next Dr. Rank, a family friend, arrives. Nora talks about asking him for a favor. Then he reveals that he has entered the terminal stage of tuberculosis of the spine (a contemporary euphemism for congenital syphilis),^[8] and that he has always been secretly in love with her. Nora tries to deny the first revelation and make light of it, but she is more disturbed by the second. She tries clumsily to tell him that she is not in love with him, but loves him dearly as a friend.

Desperate after being fired by Torvald, Krogstad arrives at the house. Nora gets Dr. Rank to go in to Torvald's study, so he does not see Krogstad. When Krogstad comes in he declares he no longer cares about the remaining balance of Nora's loan, but that he will preserve the associated bond in order to blackmail Torvald into not only keeping him employed, but giving him a promotion. Nora explains that she has done her best to persuade her husband, but he refuses to change his mind. Krogstad informs Nora that he has written a letter detailing her crime (forging her father's signature of surety on the bond) and puts it in Torvald's mailbox, which is locked.

Nora tells Christine of her predicament. Christine says that she and Krogstad were in love before she married, and promises that she will try to convince him to relent.

Torvald comes in and tries to check his mail, but Nora distracts him by begging him to help her with the dance she has been rehearsing for the costume party, as she is so anxious about performing. She dances so badly and acts so worried that Torvald agrees to spend the whole evening coaching her. When the others go in to dinner, Nora stays behind for a few minutes and contemplates suicide to save her husband from the shame of the revelation of her crime, and more importantly to pre-empt any gallant gesture on his part to save her reputation.

Act three[link]

Christine tells Krogstad that she only married her husband because she had no other means to support her sick mother and young siblings, and that she has returned to offer him her love again. She believes that he would not have stooped to unethical behavior if he had not been devastated by her abandonment and in dire financial straits. Krogstad is moved and offers to take back his letter to Torvald. However, Christine decides that Torvald should know the truth for the sake of his and Nora's marriage.

After literally dragging Nora home from the party, Torvald goes to check his mail, but is interrupted by Dr. Rank, who has followed them. Dr. Rank chats for a while so as to convey obliquely to Nora that this is a final goodbye, as he has determined that his death is near, but in general terms so that Torvald does not suspect what he is referring to. Dr. Rank leaves, and Torvald retrieves his letters. As he reads them Nora steels herself to take her life. Torvald confronts her with Krogstad's letter. Enraged, he declares that he is now completely in Krogstad's power—he must yield to Krogstad's demands and keep quiet about the whole affair. He berates Nora, calling her a dishonest and immoral woman and telling her she is unfit to raise their children. He says that from now on their marriage will be only a matter of appearances.

A maid enters, delivering a letter to Nora. Krogstad has returned the incriminating papers, saying that he regrets his actions. Torvald exults that he is saved as he burns the papers. He takes back his harsh words to his wife and tells her that he forgives her. Nora realizes that her husband is not the strong and gallant man she thought he was, and that he truly loves himself more than he does her.

Torvald explains that when a man has forgiven his wife it makes him love her all the more since it reminds him that she is totally dependent on him, like a child. He dismisses Nora's agonized choice made against her conscience for the sake of his health and her years of secret efforts to free them from the ensuing obligations and danger of loss of reputation, while preserving his peace of mind, as a mere mistake that she made owing to her foolishness, one of her most endearing feminine traits.

Nora tells Torvald that she is leaving him to live alone so she can find out who she is and what she believes and decide what to do with her life. She says she has been treated like a doll to play with, first by her father and then by him. Concerned for the family reputation, Torvald insists that she fulfill her duty as a wife and mother, but Nora says that her first duties are to herself, and she cannot be a good mother or wife without learning to be more than a plaything. She reveals that she had expected that he would want to sacrifice his reputation for hers, and that she had planned to kill herself to prevent him from doing so. She now realizes that Torvald is not at all the kind of person she had believed him to be, and that their marriage has been based on mutual fantasies and misunderstanding.

Torvald is unable to comprehend Nora's point of view, since it contradicts all that he had been taught about the female mind throughout his life. Furthermore, he is so narcissistic that it would be impossible for him to bear to understand how he appears to her, as selfish, hypocritical and more concerned with public reputation than with actual morality. Nora leaves her keys and wedding ring and as Torvald breaks down and begins to cry, baffled by what has happened, Nora leaves the house, slamming the door behind herself.

Alternative ending[link]

It was felt by Ibsen's German agent that the original ending would not play well in German theatres; therefore, for the play's German debut, Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending for it to be considered acceptable.^[9] In this ending, Nora is led to her children after having argued with Torvald. Seeing them, she collapses, and the curtain is brought down. Ibsen later called the ending a disgrace to the original play and referred to it as a 'barbaric outrage'.^[9]

Writing process and publication[link]

Ibsen started thinking about the play around May 1878, although he did not begin its first draft until a year later, having reflected on the themes and characters in the intervening period (he visualised its protagonist, Nora, for instance, as having approached him one day wearing "a blue woolen dress").^[10] He outlined his conception of the play as a "modern tragedy" in a note written in Rome on 19 October 1878.^[11] "A woman cannot be herself in modern society," he argues, since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint."^[12]

Ibsen sent a fair copy of the completed play to his publisher on 15 September 1879.^[13] It was first published in Copenhagen on 4 December 1879, in an edition of 8,000 copies that sold out within a month; a second edition of 3,000 copies followed on 4 January 1880 and a third edition of 2,500 was issued on 8 March.^[14]

Real-life basis[link]

A Doll's House was based on the life of Laura Kieler (maiden name Laura Smith Petersen). She was a good friend of Ibsen. Much that happened between Nora and Torvald happened to Laura and her husband, Victor, with the most important exception being the forged signature that was the basis of Nora's loan. In real life, when Victor found out about Laura's secret loan, he divorced her and had her committed to an asylum. Two years later, she returned to her husband and children at his urging, and she went on to become a well-known Danish author, living to the age of 83. In the play, Nora left Torvald with head held high, though facing an uncertain future given the limitations women faced in the society of the time. Ibsen wrote A Doll's House at the point when Laura Kieler had been committed to the asylum, and the fate of this friend of the family shook him deeply, perhaps also because Laura had asked him to intervene at a crucial point in the scandal, which he did not feel able or willing to do. Instead, he turned this life situation into an aesthetically shaped, successful drama. Kieler eventually rebounded from the shame of the scandal and had her own successful writing career while remaining discontent with sole recognition as "Ibsen's Nora" years afterwards.^[15]

Production history[link]

A Doll's House received its world première on 21 December 1879 at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Betty Hennings as Nora and Emil Poulsen as Torvald.^[16] Writing for the Norwegen newspaper Folkets Avis, the critic Erik Bøgh admired Ibsen's originality and technical mastery: "Not a single declamatory phrase, no high dramatics, no drop of blood, not even a tear."^[17] Every performance of its run was sold out.^[18] Another production opened at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden, on 8 January 1880, while productions in Christiania (with Johanne Juell as Nora and Arnoldus Reimers as Torvald) and Bergen followed shortly after.^[19]

In Germany, the actress Hedwig Niemann-Raabe refused to perform the play as written, declaring that "I would never leave my children!"^[18] Since the playwright's wishes were not protected by copyright, Ibsen decided to avoid the danger of being re-written by a lesser dramatist by committing what he called a "barbaric outrage" on his play himself and giving it an alternative ending in which Nora did not leave.^[20] A production of this version opened in Flensburg in February 1880.^[21] This version was also played in Hamburg, Dresden, Hanover, and Berlin, although, in the wake of protests and a lack of success, Niemann-Raabe eventually restored the original ending.^[21] Another production of the original version, some rehearsals of which Ibsen attended, opened on 3 March 1880 at the Residenz Theatre in Munich.^[21]

In Great Britain, the only way in which the play was initially allowed to be given in London was in an adapted form made by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman and called Breaking a Butterfly. This adaptation was produced at the Princess Theatre, 3 March 1884. The first British production of the play in its regular form opened on 7 June 1889 at the Novelty Theatre, starring Janet Achurch as Nora and Charles Carrington as Torvald.^[22][23][24] Achurch played Nora again for a 7-day run in 1897. Soon after its London première, Achurch brought the play to Australia in 1889.^[25]

The play was first seen in America when, during 1883, in Louisville, Kentucky, Helena Modjeska acted Nora.^[23] The play made its Broadway première at the Palmer's Theatre on 21 December 1889, starring Beatrice Cameron as Nora Helmer.^[26]

It was first performed in France in 1894.^[19]

Other productions in the United States include one in 1902 starring Minnie Maddern Fiske and a 1997 production starring Janet McTeer (in a critically acclaimed performance) at the Belasco Theater, which received three Tony Awards and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play.

A new translation by Zinnie Harris at the Donmar Warehouse, starring Gillian Anderson, Toby Stephens, Anton Lesser, Tara FitzGerald and Christopher Eccleston opened in May 2009.^[27]

Criticism[link]

This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (February 2011)

A Doll's House criticises the traditional roles of men and women in 19th-century marriage.^[28] To many 19th-century Europeans, this was scandalous. Nothing was considered more holy than the covenant of marriage, and to portray it in such a way was completely unacceptable;^[29] however, a few more open-minded critics such as the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw found Ibsen's willingness to examine society without prejudice exhilarating.^[30] In Germany, the production's lead actress refused to play the part of Nora unless Ibsen changed the ending, which, under pressure, he eventually did.^[28] In the alternative ending, Nora gives her husband another chance after he reminds her of her responsibility to their children. This ending proved unpopular and Ibsen later regretted his decision on the matter. Virtually all productions today, however, use the original ending, as do nearly all of the film versions of this play, including Dariush Mehrjui's Sara (the Argentine version, made in 1943 and starring Delia Garcés, does not; it also modernizes the story, setting it in the early 1940s).

Because of the radical departure from traditional behavior and theatrical convention involved in Nora's leaving home, her act of slamming the door as she leaves has come to represent the play itself.^[31][32] One critic noted, "That slammed door reverberated across the roof of the world."^[33]

Adaptations[link]

A Doll's House has been adapted for several film releases including two in 1973: one directed by Joseph Losey, starring Jane Fonda, David Warner and Trevor Howard; and one directed by Patrick Garland with stars Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, and Ralph Richardson. In 1993, David Thacker directed, with stars Juliet Stevenson, Trevor Eve and David Calder. Dariush Mehrjui's 1993 film Sara is based on A Doll's House, with the plot transferred to Iran with Sara, played by Niki Karimi, is the Nora of Ibsen's play.

A version for American television was made in 1959, directed by George Schaefer and starring Julie Harris, Christopher Plummer, Hume Cronyn, Eileen Heckart and Jason Robards. A 1974 West German television adaptation, titled Nora Helmer was directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and starred Margit Carstensen in the title role. A 1938 US radio production starred Joan Crawford as Nora and Basil Rathbone as Torvald. A later US radio version by the Theatre Guild in 1947 featured Rathbone with Wendy Hiller and Catherine Rowan, his co-star from a contemporary Broadway production.

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Brockett, Oscar G. and Franklin J. Hildy. 2003. History of the Theatre. Ninth edition, International edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 978-0-205-41050-7.
• Dukore, Bernard F., ed. 1974. Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski. Florence, KY: Heinle & Heinle. ISBN 978-0-03-091152-1.
• Innes, Christopher, ed. 2000. A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-15229-7.
• Meyer, Michael. 1967. Ibsen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. ISBN 978-0-14-021772-8.
• Moi, Toril. 2006. Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 978-0-19-920259-1.
• Simon, John (15 July 1991). "Baptism by Fire Island". New York) 24 (27): 55. 
• Törnqvist, Egil. 1995. Ibsen, A Doll's House. Plays in Performance ser. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 978-0-521-47866-3.
• Worthen, W. B. 2004. The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama, 6e. Wadsworth: Cengage Learning. 666-691.

Further reading[link]

• Ibsen, Henrick (trans McLeish). A Doll's House, Nick Hern Books, London, 1994
• Unwin, Stephen. Ibsen's A Doll's House (Page to Stage Study Guide) Nick Hern Books, London, 1997
• William L. Urban. "Parallels in A Doll's House." Festschrift in Honor of Charles Speel. Ed. by Thomas J. Sienkewicz and James E. Betts. Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois, 1997.

External links[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: A Doll's House

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: A Doll's House

• A Doll's House at the Internet Broadway Database
• A Doll's House at the Internet Movie Database
• A Doll’s House: A Study Guide
• A Doll's House at Project Gutenberg
• A Doll's House at Project Gutenberg (alternate edition)
• The Social Significance of the Modern Drama, a book by Emma Goldman, contains a chapter on A Doll's House.

Exterior of a hand-built American dollhouse

A dollhouse is a toy home, made in miniature. For the last century, dollhouses have primarily been the domain of children but their collection and crafting is also a hobby for many adults. The term dollhouse is common in the United States and Canada. In UK usage, dolls' house or dollshouse is common.

Today's dollhouses trace their history back about four hundred years to the baby house display cases of Europe, which showed idealized interiors. Smaller doll houses with more realistic exteriors appeared in Europe in the 18th century. Early dollhouses were all handmade, but following the Industrial Revolution and World War II, they were increasingly mass produced and became more standardized and affordable.

Contemporary children's play dollhouses are mostly in 1:18 (or 2/3") scale, while 1:12 (or 1") scale is common for dollhouses made for adult collectors.

History[link]

Miniature homes, furnished with domestic articles and resident inhabitants, both people and animals, have been made for thousands of years. The earliest known examples were found in the Egyptian tombs of the Old Kingdom, created nearly five thousand years ago. These wooden models of servants, furnishings, boats, livestock and pets placed in the Pyramids almost certainly were made for religious purposes.

The earliest known European dollhouses were the baby houses from the 16th century, which were cabinet display cases made up of rooms. They showed idealized interiors complete with extremely detailed furnishings and accessories. The cabinets were built with architectural details and filled with miniature household items and were solely the playthings of adults. They were off-limits to children, not because of safety concerns for the child but for the dollhouse. Such cabinet houses ^[1] were trophy collections owned by the few matrons living in the cities of Holland, England and Germany who were wealthy enough to afford them, and, fully furnished, were worth the price of a modest full-size house's construction.

A 17th century Nuremberg, Germany dollhouse

Smaller doll houses such as the Tate house, with more realistic exteriors, appeared in Europe in the 18th century.^[2]

The early European dollhouses were each unique, constructed on a custom basis by individual craftsmen. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, factories began mass producing toys, including dollhouses and miniatures suitable for furnishing them. German companies noted for their dollhouses included Christian Hacker, Moritz Gottschalk, Elastolin, and Moritz Reichel. The list of important English companies includes Siber & Fleming, Evans & Cartwright, and Lines Brothers (which became Tri-ang). By the end of the 19th century American dollhouses were being made in the United States by The Bliss Manufacturing Company.

Germany was the producer of the most prized dollhouses and doll house miniatures up until World War I. Notable German miniature companies included Märklin, Rock and Garner and others. Their products were not only avidly collected in Central Europe, but regularly exported to Britain and North America. Germany's involvement in WWI seriously impeded both production and export. New manufacturers in other countries arose.

Living room of a Dollhouse in Maine, United States.

The TynieToy Company of Providence, Rhode Island, made authentic replicas of American antique houses and furniture in a uniform scale beginning in about 1917.^[3] Other American companies of the early 20th century were Roger Williams Toys, Tootsietoy, Schoenhut, and the Wisconsin Toy Co. Dollhouse dolls and miniatures were also produced in Japan, mostly by copying original German designs.

After World War II, dollshouses became mass produced in factories on a much larger scale with less detailed craftsmanship than ever before. By the 1950s, the typical dollhouse sold commercially was made of painted sheet metal filled with plastic furniture. Such houses cost little enough that the great majority of girls from the developed western countries that were not struggling with rebuilding after World War II could own one.

As a hobby[link]

Dollhouse items in the scale 1:12.

Dollhouses are available in different forms. From ready-made and decorated houses to kits to custom built houses made to the customer's design. Some design and build their own dollhouse. Simpler designs might consist of boxes stacked together and used as rooms.

Miniature objects used for decoration inside dollhouses include furniture, interior decorations, dolls and items like books and clocks. Some of these are available ready-made, but may also be homemade.

There are dozens of miniature trade shows held throughout the year by various miniature organizations, where artisans and dealers display and sell miniatures. Often, how-to seminars and workshops are part of the show features. Miniature stores also hold classes. There are Internet forums, blogs and using other online social media concentrated in dollhouses and miniatures. Enthusiasts also share images online.

Construction[link]

In the United States, most houses have an open back and a fancy front facade, while British houses are more likely to have a hinged front that opens to reveal the rooms.

Children's dollhouses during the 20th century have been made from a variety of materials, including metal (tin litho), fibreboard, plastic, and wood. With the exception of Lundby, 2/3-scale furniture for children's dollhouses has most often been made of plastic.

Contemporary kit and fully built houses are typically made of plywood or medium-density fiberboard. Tab-and-slot kits use a thinner plywood and are held together by a system of tabs and slots (plus glue). These houses are usually light-weight and lower cost but often require siding, shingles, or other exterior treatments to look realistic. Kits made from heavier plywood or MDF are held together with nails and glue.

Standard scales[link]

From left: half inch scale, three quarter inch scale, 1 inch scale, 1/10 scale

The baby houses of the seventeenth and 18th centuries, and the toy dollhouses of the nineteenth and early 20th century rarely had uniform scales, even for the features or contents of any one individual house. Although a number of manufacturers made lines of miniature toy furniture in the 19th century, these products were not to a strict scale.

Children's play dollhouses from most of the 20th and 21st centuries are 1:18 or two third inch scale (where 1 foot is represented by 2/3 of an inch). Common brands include Lundby (Sweden), Renwal, Plasco, Marx, Petite Princess, and T. Cohn (all American) and Caroline's Home, Barton, Dol-Toi and Triang (English). A few brands use 1:16 or 3/4"-scale.

The most common standard for adult collectors is 1:12 scale, also called 1" or one inch scale (where 1 foot is represented by 1 inch.) Among adult collectors there are also smaller scales which are much more common in the United States than in Britain. 1:24 or half inch scale (1 foot is 1/2") was popular in Marx dollhouses in the 1950s but only became widely available in collectible houses after 2002, about the same time that even smaller scales became more popular, like 1:48 or quarter inch scale (1 foot is 1/4") and 1:144 or "dollhouse for a dollhouse" scale.

In Germany during the middle part of the 20th century 1:10 scale became popular based on the metric system. Dollhouses coming out of Germany today remain closer in scale to 1:10 than 1:12.

The largest common size for dollhouses is 1:6 which is proportionate for Barbie, Ken, Blythe and other dolls 11-12 inches tall.

Notable dollhouses[link]

• The Amsterdam 18th century dollhouses of Sara Rothé; one is in the Frans Hals Museum, and one is in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag; while the dollhouse of Petronella Oortman is in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum estimates that P. Oortman spent twenty to thirty thousand guilders on her miniature house, which was nearly the price of a real house along one of Amsterdam’s canals at that time. All three dollhouses shows the linen room (laundry room), kitchen, and bedrooms in great detail.^[1]
• The Tate House (1760), on exhibit in the Museum of Childhood in London, England.^[2]
• In Egeskov Castle in Denmark, Titania's Palace is on display, a miniature castle that was hand-built by James Hicks & Sons, Irish Cabinet Makers who were commissioned by Sir Neville Wilkinson from 1907 to 1922. The palace consists of 18 rooms and salons.^[4]
• Queen Mary's Dolls' House was designed for Queen Mary in 1924 by Sir Edwin Lutyens, a leading architect of the time, and is on display at Windsor Castle. The house has working plumbing and lights and is filled with miniature items of the finest and most modern goods of the period. Writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling contributed special books which were written and bound in scale size.^[5]
• Colleen Moore's Fairy castle has been on display since 1950s at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois.^[6]
• The 68 miniature Thorne Rooms, each with a different theme, were designed by Narcissa Niblack Thorne and furniture for them was created by craftsmen in the 1930s and 40s. They are now at the Art Institute of Chicago, Phoenix Art Museum and the Knoxville Museum of Art.^[7]
• In Tampere in Finland, the Moomin Museum displays the Moomin house, a dollhouse created around the Moomin characters of Tove Jansson. The house was built by Jansson, Tuulikki Pietilä and Pentti Eistola and later donated to the town of Tampere.^[8] The museum contains also dozens of roomboxes with Moomin characters, all made by Tuulikki Pietilä.
• The Dollhouse Museum (German: Puppenhausmuseum) in Basel is the largest museum of its kind in Europe.
• Tara's Palace is located in the Tara's Palace Museum of Childhood in the grounds of Powerscourt Estate near Enniskerry, Ireland. It is a 22 roomed dolls palace, built by Ron McDonnell in 1978 after he failed to secure the return of Titania's Palace to Ireland. It is furnished with miniature antiques.^[9]

See also[link]

• Room box

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b} Doll's house - Rijksmuseum Amsterdam - Museum for Art and History
2. ^ ^{a b} Tate Baby House - 1760
3. ^ A Brief TinyToy History
4. ^ http://egeskov.dk/en/titanias-palace
5. ^ [1]
6. ^ [2]
7. ^ Thorne Miniature Rooms - The Art Institute of Chicago
8. ^ http://inter9.tampere.fi/muumilaakso/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=47
9. ^ [3]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dollhouses

• Dollhouse Miniatures at the Open Directory Project
• Dolls' houses at the V&A Museum of Childhood
• Kruger Collection - collection of dollhouse miniatures at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
• National Museum of Australia 1930s doll's house modelled on a house in a children's novel.

Priscilla Renea Hamilton is an American singer and songwriter. She is signed to Capitol Records,^[2] and her debut album, Jukebox, was released on December 1, 2009 but failed to garner success.^[1][3] Her second album was expected to be released sometime in 2011, although no official release details have been announced. As a songwriter she has written for Madonna, Rihanna, Selena Gomez, and Cheryl Cole, to name a few.

Early life[link]

Renea was born in Vero Beach, Florida in the United States on September 14, 1988. Renea's father was a member of the Navy.^[4] Renea has stated that she began singing at age two but wasn't comfortable with singing around people until she was older.^[1][3] She disliked music that she heard on the radio so decided to write songs that she liked, and that she wanted to hear. She later stumbled upon YouTube and began posting videos of her singing in her room. She recorded videos of her self singing the dictionary, and made her own songs Independently.^[1][3] Her channel eventually received over 30,000 subscriptions and she was given the opportunity to participate in MTV's Say What? Karaoke.^[3]

Career[link]

2009-Present: Songwriting[link]

She wrote and recorded demos for Rihanna. These demos have recently been posted onto YouTube and have gained a lot of attention from Rihanna fans (some even believing it is actually Rihanna herself). These demos include 'Emergency Room' (a duet intended for Rihanna and Akon) and several more.

Renea co-wrote four songs (including the UK number-one single "Promise This" and the UK top twenty hit "The Flood") for British pop singer Cheryl Cole's second studio album, Messy Little Raindrops, released on November 1, 2010. She also co-wrote "California King Bed" for Barbadian recording artist Rihanna's fifth studio album, Loud, released on November 12, 2010. Renea also provided background vocals for the song. Renea also wrote the single "Who Says" for Selena Gomez in early 2011.

2009-2010: Juxebox[link]

Renea began her career by appearing on MTV's Say What? Karaoke program in 2007.^[3] After the program, she caught the attention of Capitol Records through her YouTube channel. She then signed with the label in 2009 and promptly began work on her own album.^[2][3] She aimed for the record to be a combination of many genres. Renea's debut album, Jukebox, was released on December 1, 2009. The record sold a mere 1,200 copies in its first week and failed to reach the Billboard 200. However, it did reach number twenty-three on the Billboard Heatseekers album charts, staying on the chart for one week.^[5] The album has sold 3,000 copies to date in the U.S. and 5,000 copies to date worldwide. Regardless of its commercial failure, the album was critically acclaimed.^[6] The album was due for an October 20, 2009 release but was delayed for additional recording to occur. The album was preceded by the single "Dollhouse", which was released on August 18, 2009. The single failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 but did reach number eleven on the Heatseekers singles chart,^[7] number thirty-one on the Hot Dance Club Songs ^[8] chart and number thirty-four on the Pop Songs,^[9] becoming a mild chart success. The second and final single, "Lovesick", was released on March 2, 2010 but failed to chart completely.^[10]