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'…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
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…
In my reading and writing, I’m drawn to complex characters, who embody the unpleasant impulses and mixed motivations we all have. I especially love well-drawn antiheroines, as women tend to be judged more harshly for being badly behaved, in life. All my books revolve around women who fit this description, from the wives and girlfriends of notorious serial killers in The Love of a Bad Man to the inner-circle of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Beautiful Revolutionary to Paulina Novak, the reckless, alcoholic murder victim at the heart of The Newcomer. To me, fiction is a playground for exploring the extremes of human thought and behaviour.
Almost any of Mary Gaitskill’s books would have suited this theme (and her short story collection Bad Behavior is the obvious choice), but Two Girls, Fat and Thin is a recent discovery and new favourite of mine. Dorothy Never is the titular fat girl, and a former acolyte of an Ayn Rand-like guru, Anna Granite. Thin girl Justine Shade is a journalist who tracks her down while writing a takedown of Granite. From this setup, the novel backtracks to tell the girls’ life stories, in parallel, building up to Justine’s journalistic betrayal of Dorothy, and its surprising aftermath.
This captivating novel shimmers with dark intensity and wicked wit. In a stunning synthesis of eroticism, rage, pathos, and humor, Gaitskill's "fine storyteller's pace and brilliant metaphors" (The New York Times Book Review) create a haunting and unforgettable journey into the dark side of contemporary life and the deepest recesses of the soul.
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
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 have published more than twenty books and hundreds of articles. But not one of those books and articles inspired the kind of devotion I felt toward The Power of Gratitude. In a way, this book encapsulates a lifetime of writing. It is the book I believe I was called to write.
This book is a memoir that demonstrates the power and joys of gratitude through the author’s memories of her childhood in Moline, Illinois.
Diane Johnson demonstrates much gratitude for her childhood, but she is no midwestern hickster. Johnson is a Hollywood film writer who has worked with such directors as Francis for Coppola and Sydney Pollack. She has traveled the world, and yet she reveals how the gratitude for her youth has sustained her through life.
“Smart . . . perceptive . . . Flyover Lives is a memoir of the Midwest sure to charm readers.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR
From the New York Times bestselling author of Le Divorce, a dazzling meditation on the mysteries of the “wispy but material” family ghosts who shape us
Growing up in the small river town of Moline, Illinois, Diane Johnson always dreamed of floating down the Mississippi and off to see the world. Years later, at home in France, a French friend teases her: “Indifference to history—that’s why you Americans seem so naïve and don’t really know where you’re…
This collection started when I had to take a course on Milton as part of my Literature degree program. It didn't make any sense to me blame Eve for the downfall of Man. (I hadn't yet developed much of a feminist consciousness and so didn't realize that women are always blamed... perhaps especially by men, perhaps especially for their own—i.e., men's—behaviour...) "I am Eve" (the first piece in the collection) is actually based on my term paper. After I graduated, I decided to go through the Bible to see who else needed to protest...
Written in 1899, this is still thebook to read. It contains thorough and thoughtful commentary on the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (part one) and Joshua to Revelation (part two). 369 pages in all. It includes the original text to be commented upon, so there is no need to go out and buy a Bible. And it is, in a word, mind-blowing. (And it will depress the hell out of you to see where we still are 123 years later.)
The publication of The Woman's Bible in 1895 and 1898 represented the last crusade of pioneer feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton to strike at the roots of the ideology behind her gender's subordinate role in society. In the tradition of radical individualism that guided her philosophy, Stanton's attack on religious orthodoxy is more a forceful political treatise than a scholarly work. This clarion call to action, assembled by Stanton and a committee of prominent feminists, consists of a book-by-book examination of the Bible, placing events in their historical context, interpreting passages as both allegory and fact, and comparing them with the…
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
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' --…
