Login
Company Name
  • Home
  • UH Press
  • Help
0
Cart
Product Details

A Pleasing Prospect by Shani D'Cruze

£18.99
In Stock
All Regions
UH Press
Description
Social change and urban culture in eighteenth-century Colchester
Add to Basket
  • About the book
  • Reviews

Studies in Regional and Local History, Volume 5

Based on extensive primary research (the author has had special access to the John Bensusan Butt archive, the most detailed private archive on eighteenth-century Colchester), A Pleasing Prospect considers the changing historical identity of eighteenth-century Colchester from the perspective of its ‘middling sort’ - a section of society which has recently attracted greater attention from historians.

Dr D’Cruze painstakingly reconstructs eighteenth-century social networks along lines of family, kinship, gender, spatiality, religion and politics to examine the relationships between individual and family biographies and broader historical change and to reflect on the historical identity of the middling sort as well as on eighteenth-century provincial urban society and culture.

In the past historians have tended to concentrate their attention on faster growing (often northern) towns than those broadly perceived as having been overtaken by industrialisation.

Colchester was a large southern provincial town which, despite the decline of its staple textile industry, capitalised on growth in agriculturally based industries such as brewing, milling and malting, its role as an east-coast port and the proliferation of its commerce, to underpin its participation in the ‘urban renaissance’ and the commodification of polite culture.

With both lively political interests and all the institutions of local governance, Colchester added a political dimension to middling-sort identity along an axis dividing independent (male) citizens from those whom poverty rendered dependent. Another axis explored by Dr D’Cruze is that between politeness and disorder.

Dr Shani D’Cruze is Honorary Reader in History at Keele University.

Her publications on gender, crime and violence include Crimes of outrage: sex, violence and Victorian working women (Routledge, 1998). She has also published articles on the social and cultural history of the family.

ISBN 978-1-902806-73-0; April 2009; 256pp; Paperback

“The use of 'thick description' and detailed case studies is central to the success of this book. It is through the careful unfolding of the stories of particular families, clubs, bankruptcies and court cases that we truly get to grips with the nuances and contingencies, but also the inter-related nature of each aspect of provincial urban life.” Jon Stobart, Local Population Studies

"[T]his is a book rich with detail and insight into a century of Colchester’s history... The book is arguably most impressive in its case studies of particular individuals and families, which are based on a meticulous search of local sources and a formidable amount of record linkage.... A Pleasing Prospect is an exemplary town history which demonstrates both thorough and painstaking archival research and a knowledge and understanding of a variety of related historiographies." Hannah Barker,Economic History Review

Back
Suggested Products - products you might be interested in
Add Ons - products that go well with your purchase
Add Ons - products that go well with your purchase
Add Ons - products that go well with your purchase
Add Ons - Available with this order
Cart
Item(s) £0.00
Grand Total £0.00

This screen shows you the details for the selected product.

Click the "Add to Cart" button to add this product to your shopping cart. You can enter a quantity larger then 1 to add multiples of this product to your shopping cart.

If the product is full you will see a "Wait List" button. Click this button if you would like to be notified if/when capacity is added. If capacity is increased we will email you.  Upon receipt of the increased capacity notification, registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

If the product is not ready for purchase you will see a "Notify Me" button. You can click this button if you would like to be notified when this product is ready for purchase.

Some products can only be purchased through our partner. In this case you will see an "External Register" button. Click this button to purchase through our partner's website.

Powered by Pay360 by Capita 30 Berners St, Fitzrovia, London W1T 3LR