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

Rating:
Summary: An interesting tour through three centuries of women
Review: The author is so lucky! Descended from the women she writes about, she has access to all their letters and diaries and many of their personal possesions. She takes all this and paints a fascinating portrait of some very interesting women living in a very interesting time.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because it is obviously the work of an amateur historian. She has great sources, and she makes them very accessible to the reader... but sometimes I felt that she did not really analyze them all that thoroughly, nor does she draw connections to the wider world. In addition, she mentions, in a rather offhand manner, that her Victorian ancestors "organized" the papers that she is using... the Victorians were infamous for destroying family records that painted an unflattering view of long-dead family members or did not support the strict Victorian code of morality. Martin does not mention her opinion of whether such vetting occured: it may seem like a minor detail, but it had me wondering for the rest of the book if some important details about these fascinating women might be missing, though the author seemed to think not.

If you liked "Aristocrats," you MUST read this book, because this book shares several characters with that one. This is a fun, easy to read introduction to Georgian upper-class women.