|
The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (Yale Nota Bene) | 
 enlarge | Author: A Vickery
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £4.38
You Save: £3.61 (45%)
New (28) Used (11) from £3.96
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 16990
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 436
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0300102224
Dewey Decimal Number: 900
EAN: 9780300102222
ASIN: 0300102224
Publication Date: November 14, 2003
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW and IN STOCK - dispatched within 48 hours from the UK
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Winner of the Longman History Today Prize in 1998, Amanda Vickery's The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England is an outstanding study of a crucial period in modern women's history. Roy Porter has described this book as "the most important thing in English feminist history in the last ten years". A reader familiar with the feminist analysis of women's lives in the late 18th to mid-19th century will find some of the commonplaces of that analysis called into question: the rise of "separate spheres" of male and female experience, for example, or the social construction of motherhood in the 18th century. At once scholarly and readable, The Gentleman's Daughter takes its readers on a vivid and well-illustrated tour of "genteel" Georgian society, bringing that world to life through what Vickery identifies as the "terms set out in their own letters by genteel women". Those terms structure the seven sections of the book: "Gentility", "Love and Duty", "Fortitude and Resignation" (which includes a notable discussion of the experience of pregnancy), "Prudent Economy", "Elegance", "Civility and Vulgarity" and "Propriety". "Our battles were not necessarily theirs", Vickery reminds us, striking her convincing balance between a feminist interest in the restriction and rebellion of women's lives and their own ways of finding meaning and pleasure in the gender distinctions of Georgian culture. --Vicky Lebeau
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Women's Lives in Georgian England July 24, 2007
Mrs. D. J. Smith (Luton, England)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Many books can be found outlining Georgian political history and more than one biography has been written on Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, but the everyday lives of genteel women have had less attention. In this book, Vickery uses surviving letters, diaries, accounts and pocketbooks of a selection of Georgian women living genteel lives in Northern England. I found the book interesting, but fairly heavy going in places. Any modern woman reading the chapter on childbirth will be glad to live in the current age! This is a good insight into everyday life and the role and functions of women within society. However, the type in my copy I found to be quite small, and so a little hard on the eyes. Chapters are also quite long with few breaks in the text. Vickery has also devoted a significant proportion of the book to notes and appendices, where she lists senders and recipients of letters referred to in the main text and other information on the original source material. Interesting, but a fairly scholarly book.
 Vital reading October 25, 2000
19 out of 24 found this review helpful
If you are a scholar of the eighteenth century and you have not read this book, then make it your top priority. It is, quite simly, the most illuminating history book of some time, and fantastically repositions the role of women in this period. Social history for the academic and lay person alike, Brilliant!!
All that a history book should be. March 3, 2000
Rod Moulds
30 out of 32 found this review helpful
I will admit that I was given this book by a dear friend, but the gift arrived at one of those amazingly serendipitous moments when everything in one's intellectual life seems to point in a single direction. During the past two years I have been rather single-minded in my pursuit of English literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, and first on my list of "keepers" are the novels written by such figures as Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Ann Radcliffe, and of course, Jane Austen. Thus, as you can imagine, Ms. Vickery's amazing feat of scholarship has been a more than welcome discovery. At turns both light-hearted and astoundingly detailed, it does just what a history book should do, in my estimation, and that is bring the past to life. Part of the fascination of history is, no doubt, that we can see how very strange and remote another time is, but how wonderful to find a work that so adroitly shows how very much we have in common with an earlier time, and in my case, brings the experiences known only through novels to full and meaningful life. I especially appreciate the fact that the author is at pains to point out just how at odds the evidence is with accepted feminist history; this somewhat contrary approach is altogether convincing. But the highest praise I can give from my perspective as a non-historian is that The Gentleman's Daughter (I cannot help but wonder if the title does not echo Elizabeth Bennet, but I may be, at present, too dazzled by Miss Austen to settle upon any other conclusion) is dazzling and entertaining, and I beg my more scholarly companions in reading to excuse the use of the suspect term.
|
|
|
www.pcprotech.co.uk | |
