Wives and Daughters: Women and Children in the Georgian Country House

Front Cover
A&C Black, Jul 16, 2004 - History - 454 pages
Told through the stories, journals and personal letters of the women of the powerful Fox family, Wives and Daughters is a window into the daily lives and experiences of women of eighteenth-century aristocratic society and the country houses that symbolized the power and taste of eighteenth-century Britain. Combining personality with historical setting and detail, Joanna Martin traces the lives of fifteen individual women in their four country houses through several generations, in society and at home. Taking an intimate and personal look at courtship, marriage, childbirth, education, houses and gardens, reading, hobbies, travel and health, this book is an engrossing account of woman's lives in this fascinating time.
 

Contents

The Fox Strangways family
8
The Fox and Digby families
25
Map of the Fox Strangways country houses
34
The memorial to William and Susan OBrien in Stinsford church
51
The Talbot family
57
Contents
79
Melbury House north front 1732
81
Susanna
108
The rock pool in Mary Talbots garden at Penrice by Emma Talbot
270
Elizabeth
369
Susan
382
Country Houses
391
Literature and Science
408
Travel
418
Patronage
424
Bibliography
431

Melbury household accounts 1762
157
A proposal for alterations to the gardens at Melbury House c 1742
263

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2004)

Joanna Martin was brought up in a country house (Penrice Castle in Wales) and is a professional genealogical historian. She is the author of William Fox-Talbot at Penrice and the editor of A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen.

Bibliographic information