Here are 100 books that Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720 fans have personally recommended if you like
Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720.
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I’ve always been fascinated by the personal stories of ‘ordinary’ people in the past, especially in their family lives. I’ve written about married couples, siblings, parents and children, and grandparents. All these are subjects familiar to us in our own lives, and I love exploring where our ancestors held very different ideas and assumptions. Marriage, parenting, and gender relations have been controversial issues for centuries. Our ancestors certainly didn’t have all the answers, but their stories give us food for thought, and their familiar personal problems bring the past much closer to us.
Did you think that all women married in former centuries? This fine and path-breaking book will put you right.
Amy Froide reveals that about one in five never married, and tells their stories to throw light on lives traditionally overlooked. Among the landed classes, many remained single because fathers couldn’t or wouldn’t raise a dowry to attract a suitable husband. Middle-class girls might be pressed to stay home and look after ageing parents or orphaned siblings. But we learn that other women remained single from choice, prizing their independence.
A lucky few had inherited the means to pay their way, while others opened a shop or practiced a craft, and took pride in supporting themselves.
Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England investigates a paradox in the history of early modern England: although one third of adult women were never married, these women have remained largely absent from historical scholarship. Amy Froide reintroduces us to the category of difference called marital status and to the significant ways it shaped the life experiences of early modern women. By de-centring marriage as the norm in social, economic, and cultural terms, her book critically refines our current understanding of people's lives in the past and adds to a recent line of scholarship that questions just how common 'traditional'…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve always been fascinated by the personal stories of ‘ordinary’ people in the past, especially in their family lives. I’ve written about married couples, siblings, parents and children, and grandparents. All these are subjects familiar to us in our own lives, and I love exploring where our ancestors held very different ideas and assumptions. Marriage, parenting, and gender relations have been controversial issues for centuries. Our ancestors certainly didn’t have all the answers, but their stories give us food for thought, and their familiar personal problems bring the past much closer to us.
I found this book fascinating. The guilds of early modern London were a male-only ‘closed shop’. But Laura Gowing’s pioneering study shows how resourceful women found ways to exploit loopholes and carve out a role in the world of skilled trades and crafts.
A guild member’s widow was permitted to continue her husband’s trade (provided she didn’t remarry), and she might take on a female apprentice and use the signing-on ‘premium’ to grow her business. Once the apprenticeship was completed, the young woman would now have the skills to set up on her own in the suburbs or provinces where guilds had no control.
I liked the case-studies where Gowing has been able to reconstruct individual lives to bring this new world vividly to life.
Ingenious Trade recovers the intricate stories of the young women who came to London in the late seventeenth century to earn their own living, most often with the needle, and the mistresses who set up shops and supervised their apprenticeships. Tracking women through city archives, it reveals the extent and complexity of their contracts, training and skills, from adolescence to old age. In contrast to the informal, unstructured and marginalised aspects of women's work, this book uses legal records and guild archives to reconstruct women's negotiations with city regulations and bureaucracy. It shows single women, wives and widows establishing themselves…
I’ve always been fascinated by the personal stories of ‘ordinary’ people in the past, especially in their family lives. I’ve written about married couples, siblings, parents and children, and grandparents. All these are subjects familiar to us in our own lives, and I love exploring where our ancestors held very different ideas and assumptions. Marriage, parenting, and gender relations have been controversial issues for centuries. Our ancestors certainly didn’t have all the answers, but their stories give us food for thought, and their familiar personal problems bring the past much closer to us.
Men thought women had no place in politics, but when England was engulfed in civil war in the 1640s women couldn’t opt out.
Ann Hughes explores the lives of those trapped in cities and castles under siege, or left to support their families when their husbands went off to war, perhaps never to return. I like the way she widens the scope of her book to show, for example, how both Cavalier and Roundhead propagandists exploited gender images, mocking their adversaries as effeminate cuckolds.
Hughes demonstrates too how the war broke down gender barriers, just as the twentieth-century world wars were to do. Women found a new voice, and played new roles, unparalleled until modern times.
In this fascinating and unique study, Ann Hughes examines how the experience of civil war in seventeenth-century England affected the roles of women and men in politics and society; and how conventional concepts of masculinity and femininity were called into question by the war and the trial and execution of an anointed King. Ann Hughes combines discussion of the activities of women in the religious and political upheavals of the revolution, with a pioneering analysis of how male political identities were fractured by civil war. Traditional parallels and analogies between marriage, the family and the state were shaken, and rival…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve always been fascinated by the personal stories of ‘ordinary’ people in the past, especially in their family lives. I’ve written about married couples, siblings, parents and children, and grandparents. All these are subjects familiar to us in our own lives, and I love exploring where our ancestors held very different ideas and assumptions. Marriage, parenting, and gender relations have been controversial issues for centuries. Our ancestors certainly didn’t have all the answers, but their stories give us food for thought, and their familiar personal problems bring the past much closer to us.
I love this book because it gives us the stories of two intelligent young women caught up in the turmoil of the civil war, told in their own words. Both belonged to royalist families, and they endured the hardships and dangers that came from being on the losing side.
Halkett’s vivid memoir focuses on her early life as a spirited young woman who engaged in forbidden and risky romantic liaisons. She even joined one lover in a hazardous plot that enabled the king’s younger son (the future James II) to escape from the Tower of London. It reads like the storyline of a historical novel!
I have been a witch since I was 21 years old—more than four decades ago! It has been my lifelong passion—you might say it’s my calling. I’ve written twelve books, almost all on witchcraft and related subjects. As a writer and a reader, I am often frustrated by the shoddy quality of books on the subject. It thrills me when really good ones come along.
I don’t think I knew, at least consciously, that magic and witchcraft needed to be revisited from a woman’s perspective until I read this book. It was so influential on my thinking! Williams takes on unspoken assumptions that underlie many of the theology, ritual, and ideas in magic and witchcraft, and she reconsiders ritual in that light.
I love that she is scholarly but explains everything simply and straightforwardly. I love that she cares about the impact of magic and witchcraft on us as human beings.
"The Woman Magician" is a thought-provoking and bold exploration of the Western magical tradition from a female perspective, celebrating the power of women's spirituality and their vital role in the magical community. Drawing on thirty years of study and personal experience, Brandy Williams reframes magic around women, examining and challenging traditional Western notions of women's bodies, energies, and spiritual needs. She discusses women's roles throughout magic's history, gender issues, and honouring the voice within to live authentically as women and magicians. Part two features personal and group initiatory rituals based on Egyptian cosmology, created by the Sisters of Seshat, the…
I have loved the history of the West since I was a child, as my family has lived here for over a century. I devoured historical fiction about pioneer girls in grammar school (including the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder), and as I got into college, I expanded my reading universe to include books about women’s roles in the West, and the meaning of this region in overall American history. This concept is what drew me to study the cultural influence of dude ranching, where women have always been able to shine -- and where I placed the protagonist of my first novel.
The title of this marvelous group biography is a play on the title of the film and comic book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and suits the characters perfectly. Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright left their safe and secure lives and found a calling in the Southwest in the early 20th century. Along the way, they met important Hopi and Navajo leaders, as well as western enthusiasts like Theodore Roosevelt. This book is a marvelous read because the author weaves their lives together in ways that show how much they had in common, as well as how individual each woman was.
WILLA Literary Award, 2016Reading the West Book Award for Nonfiction, MPIBASilver Medal, US History, 2016 IPPY AwardsWestern Writers of America Spur Award finalistLadies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world.
Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest.…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am the Chief Legal Officer at a US publicly traded company. Although I was born in Iran, I immigrated to the US from Iran at age ten. When I was three years old, my father’s side of the family tried to take my brother and me away from my mother after my father passed away. She fought a custody battle and lawsuit and eventually was forced to flee Iran with us during the revolution. I am passionate about the Iranian Revolution, my relationship with my very strong and remarkable mother who has been a mentor to me, as well as family relationships within Iranian families.
I love this book because, ultimately, it’s about the portrayal of a daughter revealing her mother’s lifelong secret. The author describes her mother’s struggles in Iran before the author was born.
The book shows how secretive the Iranian culture can be and, the downsides and negative aspects of a patriarchal society, and the long-term damage it can cause.
'With this one word, Lili had finally understood many things: that no matter what she promised or sacrificed or gave, she would always be 'broken' to her daughter.'
When Jasmin Darznik finds a photo among her father's possessions shortly after his death, she recognises the child in the veil and bride's clothes as her mother, Lili, but the groom is unfamiliar.
Who had her mother married all those years before? A few months later Lili sends Jasmin ten cassette tapes which reveal the secret history of their family: the true story of the abusive man she married, and the daughter…
I am a reader, writer, and professor specializing in memoir writing. I think every single person has a fascinating life. But, when writing it down, it can be difficult to find a narrative structure that allows the story to feel as unique as the human being writing it. I am drawn to memoirs that have fresh, creative ways of organizing their material—memoirs that go beyond or subvert the conventional, straightforward, chronological approach. After all, our memories are often scattered, fragmented, interrupted, non-linear, or just bizarre; memoirs that capture not only the person’s lived experience but also the messiness of memory itself feel more powerful and true to me.
The best memoirs, to me, are not only records of past events. They are also the record of a writer grappling with how best to tell the story. Jeannie Vanasco takes this idea to an entirely new level in this brilliant meta-memoir that not only chronicles a sexual assault she experienced in college, but also her present-day investigation into her rapist’s memories of the event, his motives, and his present-day thoughts about what happened. This book challenged me to think in new ways—not only about sexual assault, but also about the ways we remember it and write about it.
A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Best Book of the Year at TIME, Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, and Electric Literature
Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides—after fourteen years of silence—to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person.
Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a…
DeAnne Blanton retired from the National Archives in Washington, DC after 31 years of service as a reference archivist specializing in 18th and 19th century U.S. Army records. She was recognized within the National Archives as well as in the historical and genealogical communities as a leading authority on the American Civil War; 19th century women’s history; and the history of American women in the military.
This book provides outstanding biographies of the female luminaries of the Civil War, such as Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman, and Dr. Mary Walker, while also introducing readers to lesser-known women who made an impact during the great sectional conflict. Beautifully written and full of rare photographs, Women of the Civil War is captivating.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’m a writer and avid reader of crime fiction. Since I was four, my parents instilled in me a love for books, which has become a part of who I am. Before I became a bestselling and award-winning author, I was a reader, and I’ve always wanted to create stories that I love to read. I’m passionate about plots that stimulate my mind and characters that sneak into my heart and stay there. When I’m not writing, I work as a graphic designer. In my spare time, I watch crime shows and true crime documentaries. And when my mind needs a break from crime, I switch to my alter ego and write romantic comedies.
Book one in the Lacey Flint series,Now You See Me, got me hooked on the author and British mysteries. The writing style is evocative and deeply atmospheric, reminding me of gothic novels with a modern aspect.
I liked Lacey as a character, but what I found most compelling was the plot, which was a literary spider web. Although it was too graphic for my taste in places, the story was riveting enough to keep me engrossed until the very last page. I could barely keep track of all the twists and turns. By the time I finished reading, I had applauded the mind that could come up with such a complex story.
This breathtaking and exhilarating thriller from bestselling author Sharon Bolton packs a real punch: gruesome, atmospheric and utterly compelling, it relentlessly drives the reader on in their search uncover the truth. It twists and it turns and is taut with mystery and suspense...Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Cara Hunter and Karin Slaughter.
'Really special' -- LEE CHILD 'Chilling and mesmerising' -- TESS GERRITSEN 'Probably one of the best thrillers that you will read all year' -- Choice Magazine 'Brilliant story, brilliant writer' -- ***** Reader review 'A brilliantly fast-paced crime novel' -- ***** Reader review 'A real page-turner' --…
