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Excavating experiences of over a thousand women in service from church court testimony, Mansell argues that early modern service was unstable, but finely graded, fluid, and contingent. Intervening in histories of labour, gender, freedom, and law, Female Servants in Early Modern England rethinks our understanding of the institution of service.
This edited volume examines how individuals and communities defined and negotiated the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion in England between 1550 and 1800. It aims to uncover how men, women, and children from a wide range of social and religious backgrounds experienced and enacted exclusion in their everyday lives. Negotiating Exclusion takes a fresh and challenging look at early modern England’s distinctive cultures of exclusion under three broad themes: exclusion and social relations; the boundaries of community; and exclusions in ritual, law, and bureaucracy. The volume shows that exclusion was a central feature of everyday life and social relationships in this period. Its chapt...
A unique new window onto Tudor life, told through ordinary people's untimely deaths. How did ordinary people live in Tudor England? This unique history unearths the ways they died to find out. Uncovering thousands of coroners' reports, An Accidental History of Tudor England explores the history of everyday life, and everyday death, in a world far from the intrigues of Hampton Court Palace, Shakespeare's plots and the Spanish Armada. Here, farming, building and travel were dangerous. Fruit trees killed more people than guns, and sheep killed about the same number as coalmines. Men stabbed themselves playing football and women drowned in hundreds fetching water. Going to church had its dangers, especially when it came to bell-ringing, archery practice was perilous and haystacks claimed numerous victims. Restless animals roamed the roads which contained some potholes so deep men could drown, and drown they did. From bear attacks in north Oxford to a bowls-on-ice-incident on the Thames, this book uses a remarkable trove of sources and stories to put common folk back into the big picture of Tudor England, bringing the reality of their world to life as never before.
The history of early modern medicine often makes for depressing reading. It implies that people fell ill, took ineffective remedies, and died. Misery to Mirth seeks to rebalance and brighten our overall picture of early modern health by focusing on the neglected subject of recovery from illness in England, c.1580-1720. Drawing on an array of archival and printed materials, Misery to Mirth shows that recovery did exist conceptually at this time, and that it was a widely reported phenomenon. The book takes three main perspectives: the first is physiological or medical, asking what doctors and laypeople meant by recovery, and how they thought it occurred. This includes a discussion of convalesc...
An expert in Stuart England examines the sexual lives of Britons in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in this frank, informative, and revealing history. Acclaimed Stuart historian Andrea Zuvich explores the sexual mores of Stuart Britain, including surprising beliefs, bizarre practices, and ingenious solutions for infertility, impotence, sexually transmitted diseases, and more. Along the way, she reveals much about the prevailing attitudes towards male and female sexual behavior. Zuvich sheds light not only on the saucy love lives of the Royal Stuarts, but also on the dark underbelly of the Stuart era with histories of prostitution, sexual violence, infanticide, and sexual deviance. She looks at everything from what was considered sexually attractive to the penalties for adultery, incest, and fornication. Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain touches on the fashion, food, science, art, medicine, magic, literature, love, politics, faith and superstition of the day.
Au pairs are relied upon by tens of thousands of UK families to do everything from childcare and housework to elder care, pet feeding and waiting at dinner parties. Traditionally thought of as privileged and well-educated young women having fun on a 'gap year' abroad, au pairs have been excluded from many of the recent discussions on migrant domestic labour. However, since 2008 au pairing has been effectively unregulated in the UK and the result is that au pairs now constitute one of the poorest paid and least protected groups of workers. Through an examination of lived experiences, As an Equal? draws on detailed research to examine au pairs and the families who host them in contemporary Bri...
Highlights the transformative potential of including women's work in wider assessments of continuity and change in economic performance.
Early Modern Bodies is a wide-ranging and detailed introduction to a variety of different approaches to and perspectives on bodies in the early modern period, circa 1500–1750. The collection guides readers through an examination of bodies at every stage of life, from birth to death and the afterlife, as they are situated in different social, cultural, and geographical contexts. It considers the bodies of numerous potential identities, such as criminals, prostitutes, witches, soldiers, and non-conforming sexualities. Though its focus is primarily Western Europe, the volume also pays attention to the wider world, especially with respect to developing ideas about race and ‘other’ bodies in what has been dubbed an ‘age of exploration’. Chapters are also dedicated to analysing what it was to be human, how humankind was considered in relation to the natural world, and how those adhering to non-Christian faiths were thought about. This book is an accessible, essential text for students and established scholars alike who are interested in the history of the body, early modern history, and gender and sexuality.