Affording a clearer depiction of women in the Late Iron Age and Roman Britain than currently exists, Dorothy Watts examines archaeological, inscriptional and literary evidence to present a unique assessment of women and their place during the Romanization of Britain. Analyzing information from over 4,000 burials in terms of age, health and nutrition, Watt draws comparison with evidence on men’s lives and burials. Effectively integrating her archaeological findings with the political and social history of the late Iron Age and Roman period, she expertly places women in their real context.
Victorian Britain is often considered as the high point of "laissez-faire," the place and the time when people were most "free" to make their own lives without the aid or interference of the State. This book, by leading historians of nineteenth-century state and society, asks to what extent that was true and, to the extent that it was, how it worked.
The Making of Addiction - The 'Use and Abuse' of Opium in Nineteenth-century Britain
This book uncovers the original influences that shaped the creation and the various interpretations of addiction as a disease, and of addiction to opiates in particular. It delves into the treatments, regimes, and prejudices that surrounded the condition, a newly emerging pathological entity and a form of 'moral insanity' during the nineteenth century. Letters, diaries and newspapers are drawn upon to detail personal struggles with addiction and the trials of those who cared and despaired.
Dickens, Journalism and Nationhood - Mapping the World in Household Words
Dickens, Journalism, and Nationhood examines Charles Dickens' weekly family magazine Household Words in order to develop a detailed picture of how the journal negotiated, asserted and simultaneously deconstructed Englishness as a unified (and sometimes unifying) mode of expression. It offers close readings of a wide range of materials that self-consciously focus on the nature of England and Britain as well as the relationship between Britain and the European continent, Ireland, and the British colonies.
The Cut of His Coat - Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860-1914
The English middle class in the late nineteenth century enjoyed an increase in the availability and variety of material goods. With that, the visual markers of class membership and manly behavior underwent a radical change. In The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860-1914, Brent Shannon examines familiar novels by authors such as George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hughes, and H. G. Wells, as well as previously unexamined etiquette manuals, period advertisements, and fashion monthlies, to trace how new ideologies emerged as mass-produced clothes, sartorial markers, and consumer culture began to change.
