{"product_id":"mother-9780241972748","title":"Mother","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat was mothering like in the past?\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen acclaimed historian Sarah Knott became pregnant, she asked herself this question. But accounts of motherhood are hard to find. For centuries, historians have concerned themselves with wars, politics and revolutions, not the everyday details of carrying and caring for a baby. Much to do with becoming a mother, past or present, is lost or forgotten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUsing the arc of her own experience, from miscarriage to the birth and early babyhood of her two children, and drawing on letters, diaries, court records and paintings, Sarah Knott explores the ever-changing experiences of maternity across the ages. From the labour pains felt by an enslaved woman to the triumphant smile of a royal mistress bearing a king''s first son; from a 1950s suburban housewife to a working-class East Ender taking her baby to the factory; these lost stories of mothering create a moving depiction of an ever-changing human experience. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e''A joy to read'' \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e''Timely and fascinating'' Amanda Foreman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e''Utterly compelling'' \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e''Knott manages to combine scholarship with personal experience in a heartfelt and original way. Every mother-to-be should read it'' \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e''Wonderful... This is history at its best: writing that unfolds the past and sheds light on the present'' \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e''A stunning book, riveting from beginning to end'' Diane Atkinson, author of ''Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes''\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWonderful... utterly compelling. \u003c\/b\u003eThis is history at its best: writing that unfolds the past and sheds light on the present * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA joy to read,\u003c\/b\u003e borne of raw curiosity and intelligence, nurtured into the world to fill a gap in understanding. * New York Times *\u003cbr\u003eKnott manages to combine scholarship with personal experience in a \u003cb\u003eheartfelt and original\u003c\/b\u003e way. \u003cb\u003eEvery mother-to-be should read it \u003c\/b\u003e * Sunday Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA stunning book. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eMother: An Unconventional History \u003c\/i\u003eis a dextrous blend of autobiography and anthropology and social history, but above all love and a woman's desire to be a mother.\u003cb\u003e It is riveting from beginning to end\u003c\/b\u003e -- Diane Atkinson, author of 'Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes'\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eMother\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e is a timely and fascinating investigation into one of the most overlooked and yet fundamental human experiences.\u003c\/b\u003e Sarah Knott expertly weaves together a narrative that succeeds in being both intensely personal but also reassuringly historical. -- Amanda Foreman, bestselling author of 'Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLyrically evocative and richly textured,\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eMother\u003c\/i\u003e sets fragments of female lives over the last four centuries in Britain and North America within a narrative of Sarah Knott's own experiences to produce \u003cb\u003ea remarkable history - exploratory, pointillist, and intensely personal - of what it is, and has been, to be a mother.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Helen Castor, author of 'She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth'\u003cbr\u003eIn this \u003cb\u003einnovative, grippingly readable history,\u003c\/b\u003e Sarah Knott has woven a scintillating tapestry of ideas and experiences across time. \u003ci\u003eMother\u003c\/i\u003e is a \u003cb\u003emoving and enlightening\u003c\/b\u003e meditation on the most elemental, yet ceaselessly varied, of all human bonds. -- Fara Dabhoiwala, author of 'The Origins of Sex'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA remarkable book.\u003c\/b\u003e Sarah Knott weaves an intimate account of becoming a mother into a richly-documented history of maternity. \u003cb\u003eEloquent and evocative, this is a book to savour and share with anyone who loves great history-writing.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Barbara Taylor, author of 'Eve and the New Jerusalem' and 'The Last Asylum'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis fabulous book manages both to recreate what those extraordinary early months of motherhood are like, and make sense of them by placing them in history. \u003c\/b\u003eKnott's diary of motherhood is poetic: she conveys that sense that time has stopped, that only the baby's reflux matters, the heightened power of smell, the loss of self. T\u003cb\u003ehe historical anecdotes Knott provides are riveting, and open up new ways of understanding what motherhood can be. \u003c\/b\u003eThe pace of it all is perfect - slow, and focused,- just as growth has its own imperceptible rhythms.\u003cb\u003e This is a new kind of history-writing.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eA truly original, inspiring book.\u003c\/b\u003e -- Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History, Oxford\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFascinating and beautifully written.\u003c\/b\u003e A book I will feverishly press on others - both as an exploration of unheard histories and as a companion to pregnancy and early motherhood -- Rebecca Schiller, author of Your No-Guilt Pregnancy Plan\u003cbr\u003eIn this \u003cb\u003ebeautifully written\u003c\/b\u003e book, Sarah Knott speaks from the vantage point of a mother and a historian. F\u003cb\u003eull of stories ranging across time, space, and ethnicity, with imagery that touches all our senses, \u003ci\u003eMother \u003c\/i\u003ecaptures the physicality and emotions of motherhood\u003c\/b\u003e, so that even those of us who have never experienced it ourselves feel what it is like to get pregnant, give birth, and raise a child. -- Nancy Shoemaker, author of 'A Strange Likeness'\u003cbr\u003eWhich mother hasn't wondered how other mothers have managed, in different circumstances? Sarah Knott describes, for example, how a mother looked after her baby in a seventeenth-century East Anglian village; how another was a mistress of King Charles II; and a third was a slave on a North Carolina plantation. She has read through an extraordinary amount of rare diaries and letters, and then used her own sensitive imagination to bring these fragments to life. Each description is short, often only a page or two, so a mother who has just a few minutes to read before the next interruption can realistically hope to get to the end of one example, and then take that mother's situation with her, to think about, as she returns to her own. Sarah Knott had two children while she was researching and writing. Her examples are grouped in chronological order of her experience, but with unusual headings, such as 'Finding Out' that a woman is pregnant, 'Quickening', 'Damp Cloth', and 'The Middle of the Night'. The focus throughout is on mothers, and there is very little on how their babies are responding. But perhaps we readers are required to wake up some imagination of our own. -- Naomi Stadlen, bestselling author of 'What Mothers Do’\u003cbr\u003eWith the skill of a twenty-first-century mother juggling numerous professional and caring responsibilities, Sarah Knott's \u003ci\u003eMother \u003c\/i\u003eexpertly pulls off a delicate balancing act. Knott's poignant personal memoir of pregnancy, birth, feeding and beyond encapsulates its bloody, milky, hormonal immediacy, whilst, at the same time, she finds in each moment an echo of history, a thread situating her among women - their bodies, communities and cultural practices - across centuries and continents. -- Dr Rachel Hewitt\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis lyrical book-one-third memoir, two-thirds history-guides us through centuries of pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care.\u003c\/b\u003e Knott stitches her personal story to vignettes from the past and shows us how everyday mothering differed in time and place. With stunning prose, she gives us the sensory shorn of the sentimental. \u003cb\u003eA riveting read\u003c\/b\u003e -- Joanne Meyerowitz, author of 'How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn original and important account of a universal but neglected experience.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e Mother \u003c\/i\u003epowerfully conveys the thrilling, bewildering, and fuzzy-headed atmosphere that surrounds pregnancy and childbirth, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of our mothering predecessors. * Herald *","brand":"Penguin Books Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48733410132311,"sku":"9780241972748","price":13.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780241972748.jpg?v=1720000012","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/mother-9780241972748","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}