Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818

Ruth Perry

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511484438

Ruth Perry describes the transformation of the English family as a function of several major social changes taking place in the eighteenth century including the development of a market economy and waged labor, enclosure and the redistribution of land, urbanization, the 'rise' of the middle class, and the development of print culture. In particular, Perry traces the shift from a kinship orientation based on blood relations to a kinship axis constituted by conjugal ties as it is revealed in popular literature of the second half of the eighteenth century. Perry focuses particularly on the effect these changes had on women's position in families. She uses social history, literary analysis and anthropological kinship theory to examine texts by Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Henry MacKenzie, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, and many others. This important study by a leading eighteenth-century scholar will be of interest to social and literary historians.

'… engrossing book'.

Source: The Times Literary Supplement

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Novel Relations

The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-vi

Contents
pp vii-viii

Acknowledgments
pp ix-x

Introduction
pp 1-37

1 - The great disinheritance
pp 38-76

2 - Fathers and daughters
pp 77-106

3 - Sister-right and the bonds of consanguinity
pp 107-142

4 - Brotherly love in life and literature
pp 143-189

5 - Privatized marriage and property relations
pp 190-235

6 - Sexualized marriage and property in the person
pp 236-287

7 - Farming fiction: Arthur Young and the problem of representation
pp 288-335

8 - The importance of aunts
pp 336-371

9 - Family feeling
pp 372-408

Bibliography
pp 409-448

Index
pp 449-466

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Novel Relations

The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818

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