Rethinking the Family in Early Modern Britain
Will be published approx. on 31. October 2026
Book
Hardback
285 pages
978-1-009-52000-3 (ISBN)
Description
This new volume presents a more inclusive idea of the family in early modern Britain, foregrounding innovative approaches that have reframed the subject in the past twenty years. With contributions from a new generation of scholars working in collaboration with leading historians, chapters explore previously marginalised or neglected historical subjects. These include the experiences of disabled people, queer families, migrants, religious nonconformists and people of diverse heritage. The pressing concerns of war and empire are discussed, while race and ethnicity are also reconsidered in relation to intersectional dynamics of family membership and experience. Contributors rethink histories of children and religion, apprenticeship and parenting, as well as reflect on recent developments in history, including family emotion and the relationship between the family and environmental change. In early modern Britain, families were embodied and characterised by care, belonging and emotional connection, but also by exclusion and neglect. While some families might embrace change, others acted to conceal secrets or fractured under the strain of disruption.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
ISBN-13
978-1-009-52000-3 (9781009520003)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Helen Berry | Elizabeth Foyster
Rethinking the Family in Early Modern Britain
Book
approx. 10/2026
Cambridge University Press
€35.00
Not yet published
Persons
Helen Berry is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and has written extensively on the social history of Georgian England. Her previous publications include Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England (2003), The Castrato and His Wife (2011) and Orphans of Empire: The Fate of London's Foundlings (2019), which was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize. Elizabeth Foyster is a Fellow in History at Clare College, the University of Cambridge. She has published widely on topics relating to the history of the family in Britain from the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, including Marital Violence: An English Family History (Cambridge, 2005), and The Trials of the King of Hampshire: Madness, Secrecy and Betrayal in Georgian England (2016).
Content
List of plates; List of contributors; 1. Introduction: Rethinking Families Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster; 2. Children, religion and spirituality in early modern families Carys Brown; 3. Remaking family economies: the patriarchal Parish and pauper apprenticeships James D. Fisher; 4. Ties of intimacy: the body and the early modern family Sarah Fox, Karen Harvey and Emily Vine; 5. Parenting the child with learning disabilities Elizabeth Foyster; 6. Family, race and empire in early modern Britain Vivien E. Dietz and Dana Y. Rabin; 7. The family in the Anthropocene Jason M. Kelly; 8. Military families Jennine Hurl-Eamon; 9. Queer families Helen Berry and Anthony Delaney; 10. Emotions, suicide and the spectral family Ella Sbaraini; Index.