Details

Subject(s)

• Children—Death—Political aspects—Great Britain—History—19th century [Browse]
• Premature death—Political aspects—Great Britain—History—19th century [Browse]
• Bereavement—Political aspects—Great Britain—History—19th century [Browse]
• Child labor—Great Britain—History—19th century [Browse]
• Great Britain—Social conditions—19th century [Browse]
• Great Britain—Politics and government—19th century [Browse]

Series

Victorian literature and culture series [More in this series]

Summary note

• "By combining concepts from histories of the family, the emotions, and the state, What We Mourn weaves together the personal and political to argue that democratized grief for lost child life became a means to assert and even reimagine British rights and citizenship in the Victorian period"-- Provided by publisher.
• "How a new culture of bereavement changed the relationship of the Victorian state to its most vulnerable subjects When the Tory Member of Parliament Michael Sadler argued in 1832 for state intervention on behalf of Britain's dying child factory workers, he elicited smirks and ridicule from his Liberal adversaries-a response that would have been unimaginable by the century's end. What We Mourn traces the changing understandings of child death within British, imperial, and transatlantic contexts and reveals the importance of youth and emotion to constructions of the modern state. As childhood took on new meanings over the course of the long nineteenth century, public mourning for the premature deaths of children emerged as a way of asserting and even redefining British rights and citizenship. Factory hands and abolitionists, sanitation reformers and suffragists democratized and politicized their grief as they called upon the state to recognize their lives as part of a new, reimagined political order. As Lydia Murdoch shows, carrying their own and others' private grief into the public sphere-with petitions and marches, public lectures and poetry-allowed marginalized members of society to assert their claim to rights. What We Mourn explores both the power and the limitations of a new politics founded on grief and the protection of child life. "-- Provided by publisher.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN

• 9780813953816 (hardcover)
• 0813953812 (hardcover)
• 9780813953823 (trade paperback)
• 0813953820 (trade paperback)

LCCN

2025021921

OCLC

1513396577

Statement on responsible collection description

Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...