This book of sumptuous photography is the result of an important creative collaboration between Robyn Stacey, one of Australia's leading photographers, and the curators of the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales. The photographs showcase both extraordinary and everyday objects from Elizabeth Bay House, Vaucluse House, Rouse Hill House and Farm and the Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection. These evocative images and the accompanying text allow us to delve into the lives of the people who owned and used the objects - the well-respected Macleays and their increasing financial difficulties, the Wentworth family, who, despite their immense wealth, were social outcasts, and the Rouses, whose occupation at Rouse Hill House and Farm spanned 165 years of changes in Australian history. Robyn Stacey's richly composed photographs reveal something of the lives lived beneath the elegant surface, creating a future for the past.