Family Life in England and America, 1690-1820, vol 3

By studying the family we can increase our understanding of everything from democracy and capitalism to, race, gender, class, violence, religion and death. Recent scholarship has gone beyond demographic study and narrow definitions of the family to consider kinship more widely. Yet a great deal of the material that can help our understanding remains buried and untapped in a variety of remote archives. This four-volume collection of newly transcribed manuscript material brings together sources from both sides of the Atlantic and from a wide variety of regional archives. It is the first collection of its kind, allowing comparisons between the development of the family in England and America during a time of significant change. The volumes are arranged thematically to assist in these comparisons and cover a wide variety of family units. The first volume helps to define the family and covers class, ethnic, racial and religious diversity. The second volume follows the creation of the family and the final two volumes look at how families maintained and perpetuated themselves. This collection will be of interest to all those who research and teach histories of the eighteenth century, the family, women, gender and childhood.