Victorian Miniature

Owen Chadwick paints a detailed cameo of nineteenth-century English rural life, in the extraordinary battle of wills between squire and parson in a Norfolk village.

Owen Chadwick (Author)

9780521422512, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 2 May 1991

192 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.1 cm, 0.25 kg

'Chadwick tells their story with grace and great charm, for he is as fully a master of writing as of history, and there can be hardly anybody who would not rejoice over the reading of such a book as this, which is quite fascinating from its first page to its last.' The Guardian

Nancy Mitford once observed that some of the most bitter personal clashes of all time have been 'between the Manor and the Vicarage'. Owen Chadwick's Victorian Miniature paints a detailed cameo of nineteenth-century English rural life, in the extraordinary battle of wills between squire and parson in a Norfolk village. Both the evangelical clergyman and the squire, proudly conscious of his Huguenot ancestry, were passionate diarists, and their two journals open up a fascinating double perspective on the events which exposed their clash of personalities. The result is a narrative that is at once deeply informative about Victorian class distinctions, rural customs and festivities, and richly entertaining in a manner worthy of Trollope.

Acknowledgements
1. Squire and parson
2. Andrew
3. Ketteringham
4. Sir John Boileau
5. The submission of the clergy
6. James Rush
7. Ama
8. The coffins
9. Charles
10. Caroline
Epilogue
Sources
Index.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], British & Irish history [HBJD1]