Why read A Woman of Good Character?

Book cover of A Woman of Good Character: Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in Nineteenth Century New Zealand

Book description

Between the 1840s and 1880s, thousands of young single women came to New Zealand as assisted migrants from Britain and Ireland. In this detailed study of forgotten lives, Charlotte Macdonald highlights the experiences and identities of a vitally important migrant group, one previously overshadowed by the stories of gold diggers,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Woman of Good Character as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Rebecca Lenihan

Author

What I love most about this book is the focus on women. That sounds really obvious, given the title, but it’s unusual. Male migrants are so easy to find in historical sources. On shipping lists, women and children were often only recorded as ‘wife and 5 children’ of a named man.

Due to this bias in the primary sources, men are usually at the center of 19th-century migration literature. Their experience is taken as the norm. Their motivations are assumed to be the ones guiding the migration. So I really love that this spotlight on women highlights the experiences and…

From Rebecca's list on The best books about British and Irish migration and settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand.