Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England
Josephine Billingham
- Title
- Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England
- Author
- Josephine Billingham
- Price
- € 135,99
- ISBN
- 9789048538164
- Format
- eBook PDF (Adobe DRM)
- Number of pages
- 350
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 01 - 10 - 2019
- Dimensions
- 15.6 x 23.4 cm
- Categories
- Early Modern Studies
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Literary Theory, Criticism, and History
- Sociology and Social History
- Discipline
- History, Art History, and Archaeology
- Preview
- Download Preview
- Also available as
- Hardback - € 136,00
Epigram
Author's notes
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1: Losses, Lacunae and Liminality
Chapter 2: European and Medieval Contexts of Infanticide
Chapter 3: The liminal child and mother
Chapter 4: Love, Law and Liminality
Chapter 5: Constructing Outsiders, Constructing Killers
Chapter 6: Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices
Chapter 7: Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women
Chapter 8: Not the Usual Suspects: Men
Chapter 9: Interlude: Infanticide 1700-1950
Chapter 10: Epilogue: Echoes of the Past
Appendix 1: The 1624 Infanticide Act
Appendix 2: Note on Sussex Coroners' inquests
Appendix 3: Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatural, Unexplained Infant Death 1547-1686: Complete list of cases from archival and other sources
Appendix 4: Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Water
Appendix 5: Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Throwing
Appendix 6: Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Bloodshed or Extreme Violence
Appendix 7: Sussex Infant Deaths Showing Direct Involvement of Men
Index
Reviews and Features
"Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England by Josephine Billingham aims to draw together studies of infanticide in early modern England from a variety of disciplines, including literature, history, and anthropology, in order to produce a fuller and more detailed picture of a crime that has frequently been itself a victim of too-broad brushstrokes and assumptions. While attempting to cross disciplines and expand our historical understanding of this crime is not new, Billingham lays out a strong theoretical framework for interpretation. She also succeeds in creating much needed nuance to definitions of the crime, motivations, and societal reactions."
- Margaret B. Lewis, University of Tennessee at Martin, Renaissance Quarterly, Volume LXXIV, No. 2
- Margaret B. Lewis, University of Tennessee at Martin, Renaissance Quarterly, Volume LXXIV, No. 2
Josephine Billingham
Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England
Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England explores one of society’s darkest crimes using archival sources and discussing its representation in the drama, pamphlets and broadside ballads of the early modern period. It takes the reader on a journey through the streets and taverns where street literature was hawked, to the playhouses where the crime was dramatized, and the courts where it was tried and punished.
Using a regional microstudy of coroners’ inquests and churchwardens’ presentments, coupled with theories of liminality, marginality and rites of passage, it reveals complex and contradictory attitudes to infants, women and the crime. As well as considering unwed women, the most common perpetrators of infanticide, the study shows that married women, men and the local community were also culpable, and the many reasons for this.
Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England is set in its European and historical contexts, revealing surprising continuities across time.
Author
Josephine Billingham
Josephine Billingham has a PhD in English Literature from UCL. She is an independent scholar with particular interest in liminality, infant death, literature in its historical context, and the interplay between historical and literary sources.
