Sociability and Power in Late Stuart England: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys 1660-1720 [Hardcover]

Susan E. Whyman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198207190 | ISBN-13: 978-0198207191 | Publication Date: January 6, 2000

This highly original study looks at rituals of sociability in new and creative ways. Based upon thousands of personal letters, it reconstructs the changing country and London worlds of an English gentry family and reveals intimate details about the social and cultural life of the period. Challenging current views, the book observes strong connections, instead of deep divisions, between country and city, land and trade, sociability and power. Its very different view undermines established stereotypes of omnipotent male patriarchs, powerless wives and kin, autonomous elder sons, and dependent younger brothers. Gifts of venison and visits in a coach reveal unexpected findings about the subtle power of women over the social code, the importance of younger sons, and the overwhelming impact of London. Successfully combining storytelling and historical analysis, the book recreates everyday lives in a period of overseas expansion, financial revolution, and political turmoil.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`This is an important book with wide-ranging implications. It deserves a broad readership.' Journal of Modern History

`Challenges conventional assumptions about a number of major historiographical issues' Journal of Modern History, Vol.73, No.4

`This is an important and stimulating work with a significance reaching far beyond the story of the family it chronicles.' Continuity and Change, 16

`Particularly illuminating ... ethnographic study of changing patterns of hospitality and sociability.' Continuity and Change, 16

`this is a most impressive piece of research, which is both well written and packed with fascinating insights, and it should appeal to the general reader as well as the specialist.' Hugh Hanley, Records of Buckinghamshire, Vol 41

`This stimulating volume remains an important contribution to our understanding of the politely commercial people of late Stuart and Hanoverian Britain.' Perry Gauci, Urban History, Vol.28/1, 2001

`This handsome volume should be welcomed by urban historians as a work which transcends the traditional dichotomy of town and countryside ... historians have recognized the interdependence of city and hinterland, but rarely can that relationship have been more sensitively portrayed than in this book. The agency for such insight is the remarkable Verney archive at Claydon House in Buckinghamshire, which Whyman has exhaustively mined to produce a riveting portrait of a family which keenly felt the social, economic and political transformations of the late Stuart Britain. Students of the period will find much to interest them here, but historians of the family and metropolitan culture will yield particular benefit from this work.' Perry Gauci, Urban History, Vol.28/1, 2001

`Whyman's stupendous research effot took her through more than 7,000 Verney letters, written over twenty-five years. Her new and exciting dimension is the London world of the youthful John Verney ... a fine study.' Anthony Fletcher, History Today Jan 01.

`Whyman combines Lawrence Stone's willingness to borrow from other disciplines ... with, say, Conrad Russell's deep understanding of particular archives ... rich detail and sound reasoning.' Newton E. Key, History, Summer 2000.

`Susan Whyman studies a single family that has left a vast and colourful archive ... Whyman's stupendous research effort took her through more than 7,000 Verney letters ... Her new and exciting dimension is the London world of the youthful John Verney ... This is a fine study.' Anthony Fletcher, History Today, January 2001

About the Author

Susan Whyman was a visiting scholar at Wadham College in Oxford in 1989, and gained a Ph.D. in British History from Princeton University in 1993.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198207190
• ISBN-13: 978-0198207191
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,647,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan E. Whyman: email [e-mail] is an independent historian, formerly of Princeton University, where she received both M.A. and Ph.D degrees. She is interested in making history come alive by presenting the 'voices' of people in the past. Whyman lectures and publishes widely, both in England and the U.S. on letters and British culture. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author of The Pen and the People: English Letter Writers; Sociability and Power: The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys; and Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London, co-edited with Clare Brant. All of her books are published by Oxford University Press.