Mary Chan
Ashgate
Hardback
164
1998
Among the manuscript papers of the North family at Rougham Hall in Norfolk is a collection of letters and first-person narrative accounts relating to the unwanted courtship of Elizabeth Wiseman (n?e North) by Robert Spencer (cousin to the earl of Sunderland) in 1686?87 and preserved as legal evidence. The documents published now for the first time represent an almost complete correspondence on the topic of courtship and marriage at the end of the 17th century: not about love or between lovers but about indifference dislike and eventually fear. It is about social and legal constraints and for some parties possibilities for wealth and status. The documents provide a glimpse of the rich and complex texture of social life in the brief time they cover but most significant for 20th?century and accidental readers of these documents (for they were never intended to reach a reading public beyond their possible use in court) is the transformation of this into a narrative by the cumulative form of the collection: the transformation of life into story.
Ashgate
Hardback
164
1998
Among the manuscript papers of the North family at Rougham Hall in Norfolk is a collection of letters and first-person narrative accounts relating to the unwanted courtship of Elizabeth Wiseman (n?e North) by Robert Spencer (cousin to the earl of Sunderland) in 1686?87 and preserved as legal evidence. The documents published now for the first time represent an almost complete correspondence on the topic of courtship and marriage at the end of the 17th century: not about love or between lovers but about indifference dislike and eventually fear. It is about social and legal constraints and for some parties possibilities for wealth and status. The documents provide a glimpse of the rich and complex texture of social life in the brief time they cover but most significant for 20th?century and accidental readers of these documents (for they were never intended to reach a reading public beyond their possible use in court) is the transformation of this into a narrative by the cumulative form of the collection: the transformation of life into story.