Amanda Vickery is a British historian whose work centers on modern history, with a particular emphasis on the Georgian period in England. Her scholarship delves into social history, literature, the history of romance and the home, politics, law, and crime, consistently highlighting women's studies and feminism. Through her publications, she offers readers extensive knowledge and incisive analyses that illuminate the lives and experiences of women in the past. Her approach uncovers hidden aspects of society, providing fresh perspectives on historical events and social dynamics.
Based on a study of the letters, diaries and account books of over 100 women from commercial, professional and gentry families, mainly in provincial England, this book provides an account of the lives of genteel women in Georgian times.
In this brilliant work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion, bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings, genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper, servants with only a locking box to call their own. Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer's ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition.
What was the life of an eighteenth-century British genteel woman like? This lively book, based on letters, diaries, and account books of over one hundred middle class women, transforms our understanding of the position of women in Georgian England."(Vickery) has found a gold mine in the realm of women's history: letters and pocket-book diaries kept by the daughters, wives, and mothers of gentlemen of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, allowing us to hear their voices as they experience courtship, marriage, motherhood, and widowing, and to enjoy direct accounts of their domestic and social preoccupations.... Vickery's book is full of fine details and discoveries." -- Claire Tomalin, Times Literary Supplement