Novel Relations
The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:1st May '06
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- Hardback£88.00(9780521836944)
An important analysis of the transformation of the English family in the eighteenth century.
Ruth Perry describes the eighteenth-century transformation of the English family as a function of major social changes. She uses social history, literary analysis and anthropological kinship theory to examine texts by Austen, Richardson, Burney, and many others. This important study will be of interest to social and literary historians.Ruth Perry describes the transformation of the English family as a function of several major social changes taking place in the eighteenth century including the development of a market economy and waged labor, enclosure and the redistribution of land, urbanization, the 'rise' of the middle class, and the development of print culture. In particular, Perry traces the shift from a kinship orientation based on blood relations to a kinship axis constituted by conjugal ties as it is revealed in popular literature of the second half of the eighteenth century. Perry focuses particularly on the effect these changes had on women's position in families. She uses social history, literary analysis and anthropological kinship theory to examine texts by Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Henry MacKenzie, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, and many others. This important study by a leading eighteenth-century scholar will be of interest to social and literary historians.
'… engrossing book'. The Times Literary Supplement
ISBN: 9780521687904
Dimensions: 229mm x 154mm x 26mm
Weight: 747g
476 pages