The Family in Early Modern England

This text provides an assessment of the most important research published in the past three decades on the English family.

Helen Berry (Edited by), Elizabeth Foyster (Edited by)

9780521182669, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 February 2011

262 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.39 kg

Review of the hardback: 'The volume is well-supported by a thematic bibliography, which illustrates the range of approaches to this topic in recent decades. The essays gathered here are, themselves, testimony to this range and to the enduring energy of this area of study.' Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgescichte

This text was the first single volume in recent years to provide an overview and assessment of the most important research that has been published on the English family in the past three decades. Some of the most distinguished historians of family life, together with the next generation of historians working in the field, present previously unpublished archival research to shed light on family ideals and experiences in the early modern period. Contributions to this volume interrogate the definitions and meanings of the term 'family' in the past, showing how the family was a locus for power and authority, as well as personal or subjective identity, and exploring how expectations as well as realities of family behaviour could be shaped by ideas of childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. This pioneering collection of essays will appeal to scholars of early modern British history, social history, family history and gender studies.

Preface Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster
Anthony Fletcher R. I. Moore
1. Introduction Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster
2. Marriage, separation and the common law in England 1540–1640 Tim Stretton
3. Republican reformation: family, community and the state in interregnum Middlesex, 1649–60 Bernard Capp
4. Keeping it in the family: crime and the early modern household Garthine Walker
5. Faces in the crowd: gender and age in the early modern English crowd John Walter
6. 'Without the Cry of Any Neighbours': a Cumbrian family and the Poor Law authorities, c.1690–1730 Steve Hindle
7. Childless men in early modern England Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster
8. Aristocratic women and the ideas of family in the early eighteenth century Ingrid Tague
9. Reassessing parenting in eighteenth-century England Joanne Bailey.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]