Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve always been fascinated by the personal stories of ā€˜ordinaryā€™ people in the past, especially in their family lives. Iā€™ve written about married couples, siblings, parents and children, and grandparents. All these are subjects familiar to us in our own lives, and I love exploring where our ancestors held very different ideas and assumptions. Marriage, parenting, and gender relations have been controversial issues for centuries. Our ancestors certainly didnā€™t have all the answers, but their stories give us food for thought, and their familiar personal problems bring the past much closer to us.


I wrote

When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England

By Bernard Capp,

Book cover of When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England

What is my book about?

In this book I wanted to show that though Stuart England was a society dominated by men, women were farā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720

Bernard Capp Why did I love this book?

If youā€™re looking for a balanced and warm-hearted ā€˜cradle to graveā€™ survey of womenā€™s lives in the past, I think this is the best.

The authors describe the experiences shared by all women, and explain the huge gulf in other areas of life between the worlds of rich and poor. As well as the obvious themes of childhood, courtship, marriage, parenting, and old age, they explore womenā€™s work (both paid and unpaid), their friendships and cultural lives, and their involvement with politics and religion.

And I love the fifty well-chosen illustrations that bring each of these topics to life.

By Sara Mendelson, Patricia Crawford,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is an original, accessible, and comprehensive survey of life as it was experienced by most Englishwomen during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The authors examine virtually all aspects of women's lives: female life-stages from birth to death; the separate culture of women, including female friendship and feminist consciousness; the diverse roles of women in the religious and political movements of the day; and the effect of prevailing perceptions of
gender differences. Comparisons are made between the makeshift economy of poor women and the occupational identities, and preoccupations, of the middling and elite classes. This fascinating and well-illustrated book reconstructsā€¦


Book cover of Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England

Bernard Capp Why did I love this book?

Did you think that all women married in former centuries? This fine and path-breaking book will put you right.

Amy Froide reveals that about one in five never married, and tells their stories to throw light on lives traditionally overlooked. Among the landed classes, many remained single because fathers couldnā€™t or wouldnā€™t raise a dowry to attract a suitable husband. Middle-class girls might be pressed to stay home and look after ageing parents or orphaned siblings. But we learn that other women remained single from choice, prizing their independence.

A lucky few had inherited the means to pay their way, while others opened a shop or practiced a craft, and took pride in supporting themselves.

By Amy M. Froide,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Never Married as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England investigates a paradox in the history of early modern England: although one third of adult women were never married, these women have remained largely absent from historical scholarship. Amy Froide reintroduces us to the category of difference called marital status and to the significant ways it shaped the life experiences of early modern women. By de-centring marriage as the norm in social, economic, and
cultural terms, her book critically refines our current understanding of people's lives in the past and adds to a recent line of scholarship that questions just how common 'traditional'ā€¦


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Book cover of Acquaintance

Acquaintance by Jeff Stookey,

Acquaintance is a work of LGBT historical fiction, a gay love story set in 1923 when the Ku Klux Klan was growing in influence, the eugenics movement was passing human sterilization laws, illegal liquor was fueling corruption, and Freud was all the rage.

Based on extensive period research, the storyā€¦

Book cover of Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London

Bernard Capp Why did I love this book?

I found this book fascinating. The guilds of early modern London were a male-only ā€˜closed shopā€™. But Laura Gowingā€™s pioneering study shows how resourceful women found ways to exploit loopholes and carve out a role in the world of skilled trades and crafts.

A guild memberā€™s widow was permitted to continue her husbandā€™s trade (provided she didnā€™t remarry), and she might take on a female apprentice and use the signing-on ā€˜premiumā€™ to grow her business. Once the apprenticeship was completed, the young woman would now have the skills to set up on her own in the suburbs or provinces where guilds had no control.

I liked the case-studies where Gowing has been able to reconstruct individual lives to bring this new world vividly to life.   

By Laura Gowing,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ingenious Trade as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ingenious Trade recovers the intricate stories of the young women who came to London in the late seventeenth century to earn their own living, most often with the needle, and the mistresses who set up shops and supervised their apprenticeships. Tracking women through city archives, it reveals the extent and complexity of their contracts, training and skills, from adolescence to old age. In contrast to the informal, unstructured and marginalised aspects of women's work, this book uses legal records and guild archives to reconstruct women's negotiations with city regulations and bureaucracy. It shows single women, wives and widows establishing themselvesā€¦


Book cover of Gender and the English Revolution

Bernard Capp Why did I love this book?

Men thought women had no place in politics, but when England was engulfed in civil war in the 1640s women couldnā€™t opt out.

Ann Hughes explores the lives of those trapped in cities and castles under siege, or left to support their families when their husbands went off to war, perhaps never to return. I like the way she widens the scope of her book to show, for example, how both Cavalier and Roundhead propagandists exploited gender images, mocking their adversaries as effeminate cuckolds.

Hughes demonstrates too how the war broke down gender barriers, just as the twentieth-century world wars were to do. Women found a new voice, and played new roles, unparalleled until modern times. 

By Ann Hughes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gender and the English Revolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this fascinating and unique study, Ann Hughes examines how the experience of civil war in seventeenth-century England affected the roles of women and men in politics and society; and how conventional concepts of masculinity and femininity were called into question by the war and the trial and execution of an anointed King. Ann Hughes combines discussion of the activities of women in the religious and political upheavals of the revolution, with a pioneering analysis of how male political identities were fractured by civil war. Traditional parallels and analogies between marriage, the family and the state were shaken, and rivalā€¦


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Book cover of The Cowboy's Lost Family

The Cowboy's Lost Family by Roxanne Snopek,

Heā€™s looking for the one thing sheā€™s done with: family.

Brade Oliver arrives in Grand, Montana, looking for bloodā€”and answers. Genetic tests reveal that his biological family may reside in the small, western town, and heā€™s on a mission to finally discover the one thing his adoptive family couldnā€™t giveā€¦

Book cover of The Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe

Bernard Capp Why did I love this book?

I love this book because it gives us the stories of two intelligent young women caught up in the turmoil of the civil war, told in their own words. Both belonged to royalist families, and they endured the hardships and dangers that came from being on the losing side.

Halkettā€™s vivid memoir focuses on her early life as a spirited young woman who engaged in forbidden and risky romantic liaisons. She even joined one lover in a hazardous plot that enabled the kingā€™s younger son (the future James II) to escape from the Tower of London. It reads like the storyline of a historical novel!

Explore my book šŸ˜€

When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England

By Bernard Capp,

Book cover of When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England

What is my book about?

In this book I wanted to show that though Stuart England was a society dominated by men, women were far from the passive victims of patriarchy. A popular proverb held that it was ā€˜better to marry a shrew than a sheepā€™, meaning that a feisty woman was more able to hold her own in the marketplace and manage a household. Men needed strong, capable partners, not doormats. I also explore how a woman saddled with an abusive husband could fight back, by turning to her ā€˜gossipsā€™, her female friends and neighbors, who could provide both emotional and practical support. And they might hector him in the street to shame him into mending his ways. 

Book cover of Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720
Book cover of Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England
Book cover of Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London

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