Henry French – författare

Masculinity is an expanding area of gender history. Man''s Estate is the first book to focus on a particular social group, the English landed gentry, and to cover a time span of several hundred years. The authors move beyond the study of printed conduct literature, which dominated earlier accounts, by examining the values expressed in family correspondence in order to get closer to social practices. Letters between parents, children, siblings, and otherrelatives reveal the ways in which masculine norms were produced through everyday interactions and judgements, and help to reconstruct the subjective experiences of elite masculinity in this period. Man''s Estate concentrates on four important periods in the life-course for the reproduction of these masculinevalues: schooling, university, foreign travel, and marriage and family life. These illustrate that there is only limited evidence of sharp-edged differences in values between generations in these families, and that these changes appear not to correspond to the deep ''hegemonic shifts'' so often emphasized in existing accounts.French and Rothery suggest that the fundamental distributions of power and authority within Gentry families remained fairly constant. Conventional ideas of male honour, virtue, reputation, and autonomy were remarkably tenacious, and the continued stress on family heritage, dynastic traditions, and the future security of the family patrimony acted as a brake on changes in the training of young English gentlemen.The research is based on over 4,000 letters drawn from 19 landed families across England between c. 1680 and c. 1900, and is the result of a three-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Masculinity is an expanding area of gender history. Man's Estate is the first book to focus on a particular social group, the English landed gentry, and to cover a time span of several hundred years. The authors move beyond the study of printed conduct literature, which dominated earlier accounts, by examining the values expressed in family correspondence in order to get closer to social practices. Letters between parents, children, siblings, and other relatives reveal the ways in which masculine norms were produced through everyday interactions and judgements, and help to reconstruct the subjective experiences of elite masculinity in this period. Man's Estate concentrates on four important periods in the life-course for the reproduction of these masculine values: schooling, university, foreign travel, and marriage and family life. These illustrate that there is only limited evidence of sharp-edged differences in values between generations in these families, and that these changes appear not to correspond to the deep 'hegemonic shifts' so often emphasized in existing accounts. French and Rothery suggest that the fundamental distributions of power and authority within Gentry families remained fairly constant. Conventional ideas of male honour, virtue, reputation, and autonomy were remarkably tenacious, and the continued stress on family heritage, dynastic traditions, and the future security of the family patrimony acted as a brake on changes in the training of young English gentlemen.The research is based on over 4,000 letters drawn from 19 landed families across England between c. 1680 and c. 1900, and is the result of a three-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The power and status of English male elites were not merely inherited at birth but developed through everyday interactions with family, peers and guardians. Much of these conversations were conducted through correspondence. In this fascinating Sourcebook, Mark Rothery and Henry French present a unique collection of letters which together trace this construction of gender and social identities.The Formation of Male Elite Identities in England, c.1660-1900:- Reveals the lifelong process of shaping and managing manliness via a range of social agents- Illustrates continuities and changes in the values associated with the landed gentry over the course of the period, and within the male lifecycle- Charts the process from school and university, through to experiences of travel, courtship, marriage and work- Provides a detailed Introduction to the letters, editorial guidance throughout, questions to stimulate discussion, and helpful suggestions for further reading

The power and status of English male elites were not merely inherited at birth but developed through everyday interactions with family, peers and guardians. Much of these conversations were conducted through correspondence. In this fascinating Sourcebook, Mark Rothery and Henry French present a unique collection of letters which together trace this construction of gender and social identities.The Formation of Male Elite Identities in England, c.1660-1900:- Reveals the lifelong process of shaping and managing manliness via a range of social agents- Illustrates continuities and changes in the values associated with the landed gentry over the course of the period, and within the male lifecycle- Charts the process from school and university, through to experiences of travel, courtship, marriage and work- Provides a detailed Introduction to the letters, editorial guidance throughout, questions to stimulate discussion, and helpful suggestions for further reading

First comparative study of landless households brings out their major role in European history and society.The numbers of landless people - those lacking formal rights to land, or possessing only tiny smallholdings - grew rapidly across post-medieval Europe, as rural population and economic growth divided landowners and farmers from (increasingly) landless rural workers. But they have hitherto been relatively neglected, a gap which this volume, covering Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Britain, France and Spain from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, aims to fill, making creative use of a diverse range of unexplored sources. Instead of concentrating on the well-documented cases of landholding peasants, it explores the many different experiences of the numerous rural landless. It explains how their households were formed (often in the face of economic difficulties and official hostility), how all the members of a family contributed to its survival, how the landless related to other social groups and negotiated access to vital resources, and how they adapted as rural society was changed by war, politics, agrarian and industrial development, government policy and welfare systems.Contributors: Arnau Barquer i Cerdà, John Broad, ⴕ Dieter Bruneel, Christine Fertig, Henry French, Margareth Lanzinger, Jonas Lindström, Riikka Miettinen, Richard Paping, Wouter Ronsijn, Merja Uotila, Nadine Vivier

In 1818 the Royal Forest of Exmoor was sold by the Crown to the Worcestershire ironfounder John Knight. Through the nineteenth century the Knight family embarked on the largest upland reclamation scheme in southern England, on the biggest remaining area of uninhabited land.

In 1818 the Royal Forest of Exmoor was sold by the Crown to the Worcestershire ironfounder John Knight. Through the nineteenth century the Knight family embarked on the largest upland reclamation scheme in southern England, on the biggest remaining area of uninhabited land. Their efforts were enormously costly, and only a partial success. The story of thwarted agricultural ‘improvement’ was told by C.S. Orwin’s ‘The Reclamation of Exmoor’, first published in 1929. With funding from The Leverhulme Trust, Henry French, Ralph Fyfe and Leonard Baker have undertaken a new study of the reclamation of the Royal Forest. Based on their findings, this book rewrites the reclamation of Exmoor in several ways.