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friendofgosig's review
4.0
This was a very detailed and engaging account, which I found fascinating, showing the variety and complexity of women’s experience in the eighteenth century. Sometimes funny, sometimes horrific and sometimes painful, these accounts gathered from women’s letters and diaries painted a picture of the competing pressures on women that does not necessarily conform to a simple historical understanding of the position of women at this time.
It can be quite dry in places, but I would definitely recommend for someone with an interest in the period.
It can be quite dry in places, but I would definitely recommend for someone with an interest in the period.
heather_freshparchment's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Death
aartireadsalot's review against another edition
4.0
http://aartichapati.blogspot.com/2009/03/gentlemans-daughter-womens-lives-in.html
wealhtheow's review against another edition
2.0
A very dry book about what it meant to be a British lady in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's a very broad subject, but for some reason Vickery only uses two women's journals and a handful of newspaper comics as her evidence. Eventually, I gave up.
janel's review
4.0
An often fascinating look at what the lives of genteel 18th-century women entailed. Each chapter is introduced and closed in a way that can be dryly academic, but in between she largely lets the women whose writings are featured speak for themselves.
clairen's review
3.0
As many reviews have said, it is a really dry read.
It's an academic work, thoroughly researched, with countless quotations from the diaries and letters of the women it focuses on (especially one Elizabeth Parker then Shackleton), and from books of the period, but that's exactly what makes it a bit tough for a casual reader: the flow of the writing is constantly interrupted, and the 18th century style slows you down.
I love history and I was interested in reading about the period during which one of my favourite writers lived and worked, and I definitely got a better understanding of what life was for what we would call today an upper-middle class woman during the Georgian period, but still I had quite a hard time getting through this.
It's an academic work, thoroughly researched, with countless quotations from the diaries and letters of the women it focuses on (especially one Elizabeth Parker then Shackleton), and from books of the period, but that's exactly what makes it a bit tough for a casual reader: the flow of the writing is constantly interrupted, and the 18th century style slows you down.
I love history and I was interested in reading about the period during which one of my favourite writers lived and worked, and I definitely got a better understanding of what life was for what we would call today an upper-middle class woman during the Georgian period, but still I had quite a hard time getting through this.
aartireadsalot's review
4.0
http://aartichapati.blogspot.com/2009/03/gentlemans-daughter-womens-lives-in.html
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