Title Incest & influence : the private life of bourgeois England / Adam Kuper

Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2009

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Description 1 online resource (296 pages) : illustrations Contents Prologue: Darwin's Marriage -- Introduction -- Part 1: Question Of Incest -- 1: Romance of incest and the love of cousins -- 2: Law of incest -- 3: Science of incest and heredity -- Part 2: Family Concerns -- 4: Family business -- 5: Wilberforce and the Clapham sect -- 6: Difficulties with siblings -- Part 3: Intellectuals -- 7: Bourgeois intellectuals -- 8: Bloomsbury version -- Coda: End of the line -- Notes -- Index Summary From the Publisher: Like many gentlemen of his time, Charles Darwin married his first cousin. In fact, marriages between close relatives were commonplace in nineteenth-century England, and Adam Kuper argues that they played a crucial role in the rise of the bourgeoisie. Incest and Influence shows us just how the political networks of the eighteenth-century aristocracy were succeeded by hundreds of in-married bourgeois clans-in finance and industry, in local and national politics, in the church, and in intellectual life. In a richly detailed narrative, Kuper deploys his expertise as an anthropologist to analyze kin marriages among the Darwins and Wedgwoods, in Quaker and Jewish banking families, and in the Clapham Sect and their descendants over four generations, ending with a revealing account of the Bloomsbury Group, the most eccentric product of English bourgeois endogamy. These marriage strategies were the staple of novels, and contemporaries were obsessed with them. But there were concerns. Ideas about incest were in flux as theological doctrines were challenged. For forty years Victorian parliaments debated whether a man could marry his deceased wife's sister. Cousin marriage troubled scientists, including Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton, provoking revolutionary ideas about breeding and heredity. This groundbreaking study brings out the connection between private lives, public fortunes, and the history of imperial Britain Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes In English Print version record Subject Consanguinity -- England -- History -- 19th century Cross-cousin marriage -- England -- History -- 19th century Incest -- Social aspects -- England -- History -- 19th century Domestic relations -- England -- History -- 19th century Middle class -- England -- History -- 19th century Elite (Social sciences) -- England -- History -- 19th century FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS -- Alternative Family. FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS -- Reference. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural. Consanguinity Cross-cousin marriage Domestic relations Elite (Social sciences) Incest -- Social aspects Middle class England Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780674054141 0674054148

Other Titles Incest and influence

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