Description
Book SynopsisMasculinity is an expanding area of gender history. Man''s Estate is the first book to focus on a particular social group, the English landed gentry, and to cover a time span of several hundred years. The authors move beyond the study of printed conduct literature, which dominated earlier accounts, by examining the values expressed in family correspondence in order to get closer to social practices. Letters between parents, children, siblings, and other relatives reveal the ways in which masculine norms were produced through everyday interactions and judgements, and help to reconstruct the subjective experiences of elite masculinity in this period. Man''s Estate concentrates on four important periods in the life-course for the reproduction of these masculine values: schooling, university, foreign travel, and marriage and family life. These illustrate that there is only limited evidence of sharp-edged differences in values between generations in these families, and that these changes ap
Trade Reviewthis well-organised monograph will surely suggest promising topics for future research on northern gentry. * Northern History *
raises important questions about how one thinks about periodization that will preoccupy historians of gender for some time to come. * Ben Griffin, English Historical Review *
Harry French and Mark Rothery's book is a very welcome intervention in the rapidly advancing history of masculinity, providing a valuable empirical account of gentry masculine identity. * Continuity and Change *
The authors have done students of gender and masculinity a great service in uncovering this material and presenting it, with care and sensitivity, for the first time. Such a thoroughgoing study of English landed gentlemen has not existed before. * Karen Harvey, H-Net *
Henry French and Mark Rothery ambitiously undertake to bring clarity to what is a still rather muddled history of men and manhood. They succeed admirably. * James Rosenheim, American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Landed Elite and Male Gender Identities over the Longue Duree ; 1. The World of Learning: Schooling and Training Academies ; 2. Entering into the World: University and Apprenticeships ; 3. Seeing the World: The Grand Tour and Other Travels ; 4. Settled in the World: Marriage, Fatherhood, and the Reproduction of Male Identities ; Conclusion: Normative Reproduction and Change over Time ; Bibliography
