Helen Berry – författare

Eighteenth-century London was teeming with humanity, and poverty was never far from politeness. Legend has it that, on his daily commute through this thronging metropolis, Captain Thomas Coram witnessed one of the city's most shocking sights-the widespread abandonment of infant corpses by the roadside. He could have just passed by. Instead, he devised a plan to create a charity that would care for these infants; one that was to have enormous consequences for children born into poverty in Britain over the next two hundred years.Orphans of Empire tells the story of what happened to the thousands of children who were raised at the London Foundling Hospital, Coram's brainchild, which opened in 1741 and grew to become the most famous charity in Georgian England. It provides vivid insights into the lives and fortunes of London's poorest children, from the earliest days of the Foundling Hospital to the mid-Victorian era, when Charles Dickens was moved by his observations of the charity's work to campaign on behalf of orphans. Through the lives of London's foundlings, this book provides readers with a street-level insight into the wider global history of a period of monumental change in British history as the nation grew into the world's leading superpower. Some foundling children were destined for Britain's 'outer Empire' overseas, but many more toiled in the 'inner Empire', labouring in the cotton mills and factories of northern England at the dawn of the new industrial age.Through extensive archival research, Helen Berry uncovers previously untold stories of what happened to former foundlings, including the suffering and small triumphs they experienced as child workers during the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. Sometimes, using many different fragments of evidence, the voices of the children themselves emerge. Extracts from George King's autobiography, the only surviving first-hand account written by a Foundling Hospital child born in the eighteenth century, published here for the first time, provide touching insights into how he came to terms with his upbringing. Remarkably he played a part in Trafalgar, one of the most iconic battles in British Naval history. His personal courage and resilience in overcoming the disadvantages of his birth form a lasting testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

Eighteenth-century London was teeming with humanity, and poverty was never far from politeness. Legend has it that, on his daily commute through this thronging metropolis, Captain Thomas Coram witnessed one of the city's most shocking sights-the widespread abandonment of infant corpses by the roadside. He could have just passed by. Instead, he devised a plan to create a charity that would care for these infants; one that was to have enormous consequences for children born into povertyin Britain over the next two hundred years. Orphans of Empire tells the story of what happened to the thousands of children who were raised at the London Foundling Hospital, Coram's brainchild, which opened in 1741 and grew to become the most famous charity in Georgian England. It provides vivid insights into the lives and fortunes of London's poorest children, from the earliest days of the Foundling Hospital to the mid-Victorian era, when Charles Dickens was moved by his observations of the charity's work to campaign on behalf of orphans. Through the lives of London's foundlings, this book provides readers with a street-level insight into the wider global history of a period of monumental change in British history as the nation grew into the world's leading superpower. Some foundling children were destined for Britain's 'outer Empire' overseas, but many more toiled in the 'inner Empire', labouring in the cotton mills and factories of northern England at the dawn of the new industrial age. Through extensive archival research, Helen Berry uncovers previously untold stories of what happened to former foundlings, including the suffering and small triumphs they experienced as child workers during the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. Sometimes, using many different fragments of evidence, the voices of the children themselves emerge. Extracts from George King's autobiography, the only surviving first-hand account written by a Foundling Hospital child born in the eighteenth century, published here for the first time, provide touching insights into how he came to terms with his upbringing. Remarkably he played a part in Trafalgar, one of the most iconic battles in British Naval history. His personal courage and resilience in overcoming the disadvantages of his birth form a lasting testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato. Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before. Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.

The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato. Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before. Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press' Open Access publishing program. This exciting volume presents the work and research of the Rivers of the Anthropocene Network, an international collaborative group of scientists, social scientists, humanists, artists, policy makers, and community organizers working to produce innovative transdisciplinary research on global freshwater systems. In an attempt to bridge disciplinary divides, the essays in this volume address the challenge in studying the intersection of biophysical and human sociocultural systems in the age of the Anthropocene. Featuring contributions from authors in a rich diversity of disciplines-from toxicology to archaeology to philosophy - this book is an excellent resource for students and scholars studying both freshwater systems and the Anthropocene.

This text was the first single volume in recent years to provide an overview and assessment of the most important research that has been published on the English family in the past three decades. Some of the most distinguished historians of family life, together with the next generation of historians working in the field, present previously unpublished archival research to shed light on family ideals and experiences in the early modern period. Contributions to this volume interrogate the definitions and meanings of the term 'family' in the past, showing how the family was a locus for power and authority, as well as personal or subjective identity, and exploring how expectations as well as realities of family behaviour could be shaped by ideas of childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. This pioneering collection of essays will appeal to scholars of early modern British history, social history, family history and gender studies.

This text was the first single volume in recent years to provide an overview and assessment of the most important research that has been published on the English family in the past three decades. Some of the most distinguished historians of family life, together with the next generation of historians working in the field, present previously unpublished archival research to shed light on family ideals and experiences in the early modern period. Contributions to this volume interrogate the definitions and meanings of the term 'family' in the past, showing how the family was a locus for power and authority, as well as personal or subjective identity, and exploring how expectations as well as realities of family behaviour could be shaped by ideas of childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. This pioneering collection of essays will appeal to scholars of early modern British history, social history, family history and gender studies.

Focusing on a largely unknown type of popular print culture that developed in the late 1600s-the coffee house periodical-Helen Berry here offers new evidence that the politics of gender, far from being a marginal or frivolous topic, was an issue of general interest and wide-spread concern to the early modern reader. Berry's study provides the first full length analysis of John Dunton's Athenian Mercury (1691-97), an influential specimen of the coffee-house periodical genre, as well as the original question-and-answer publication which addressed both men's and women's issues in one journal. As the chapter headings in this book indicate, the topics addressed in the "agony column" of the Athenian Mercury-for example, the body, courtship, and sex-are of enduring interest across the centuries. Berry's study of this periodical provides new insights into the gendered ideas and debates that circulated among middling sorts in early modern England. An historical survey of the social effects of mass communication in the early modern period, this volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing study of how gendered ideas and values were communicated culturally, particularly beyond the milieu of elite groups such as the nobility and gentry. It argues that the mass media was from its infancy an important means of communicating powerful messages about gender norms, particularly among the middling sorts. The study will appeal not only to historians, women and gender studies scholars and literature scholars, but also to scholars of publishing history.

Historians of the long eighteenth century have recently recognised that this period is central both to the history of cultural production and consumption and to the history of national and regional identity. Yet no book has, as yet, directly engaged with these two areas of interest at the same time. By uniting interest in the history of culture with the history of regional identity, Creating and Consuming Culture in North-East England, 1660-1830 is of crucial importance to a wide range of historians and intervenes in a number of highly important historical and conceptual debates in a timely and provocative way. The book makes a substantial contribution to eighteenth-century studies. Not only do these essays demonstrate that in thinking about cultural production and consumption in the eighteenth century there are important continuities as well as changes that need to be considered, but also they complicate the commonplace assumption of metropolitan-led cultural change and cultural innovation. Rather than the usual model of centre-periphery diffusion, a number of contributions show that cultural change in the provinces was happening at the same time as in, or in some cases even before, London. The essays also indicate the complex relationship between cultural consumption and social status, with some cultural forms being more inclusive than others.

This new volume presents a more inclusive idea of the family in early modern Britain, foregrounding innovative approaches that have reframed the subject in the past twenty years. With contributions from a new generation of scholars working in collaboration with leading historians, chapters explore previously marginalised or neglected historical subjects. These include the experiences of disabled people, queer families, migrants, religious nonconformists and people of diverse heritage. The pressing concerns of war and empire are discussed, while race and ethnicity are also reconsidered in relation to intersectional dynamics of family membership and experience. Contributors rethink histories of children and religion, apprenticeship and parenting, as well as reflect on recent developments in history, including family emotion and the relationship between the family and environmental change. In early modern Britain, families were embodied and characterised by care, belonging and emotional connection, but also by exclusion and neglect. While some families might embrace change, others acted to conceal secrets or fractured under the strain of disruption.

This new volume presents a more inclusive idea of the family in early modern Britain, foregrounding innovative approaches that have reframed the subject in the past twenty years. With contributions from a new generation of scholars working in collaboration with leading historians, chapters explore previously marginalised or neglected historical subjects. These include the experiences of disabled people, queer families, migrants, religious nonconformists and people of diverse heritage. The pressing concerns of war and empire are discussed, while race and ethnicity are also reconsidered in relation to intersectional dynamics of family membership and experience. Contributors rethink histories of children and religion, apprenticeship and parenting, as well as reflect on recent developments in history, including family emotion and the relationship between the family and environmental change. In early modern Britain, families were embodied and characterised by care, belonging and emotional connection, but also by exclusion and neglect. While some families might embrace change, others acted to conceal secrets or fractured under the strain of disruption.