Ladies of the Manor: How Wives & Daughters Really Lived in Country House Society Over a Century Ago

by Pamela Horn

In the world of the late-Victorian and Edwardian country house the mistress and her daughters had many social duties and responsibilities to carry out both in their home community and in London, where they spent the Season and where the girls officially entered Society by being presented at Court. Pamela Horn's book examines the lives of these ladies from their childhood and marriage to their role as a 'Lady Bountiful'. It covers their leisure pursuits, sporting activities, country house weekends, and much more besides, up to the life-transforming years of the First World War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Research, Victorian, British Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Pamela Horn is an historian specialising in Victorian social history. The author of acclaimed books on rural life, servant lives and childhood, she lectured on economic and social history at Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford Brookes University, for over twenty years.

Reviews

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book by Pamela Horn I’ve read and she definitely seems to write those history books which basically aggregate information from other, more obscure sources. Whenever I read these I find myself hoping that I’m going to find another The Housekeeper's Tale - The Women who really ran the English Country House, and I’m always disappointed. The information is aggregated, and while the writing is better than some examples of the genre, Horn definitely doesn’t seek to have a strong narrative voice, which would enliven the book considerably (e.g. the snarky and entertaining To Marry an English Lord: Or How Anglomania Really Got Started). Instead everything stays rather… fair, and therefore dull, so for example when quoting some aristocrat on how grateful the peasants were for the lady of the manor’s largesse, Horn is careful to also quote someone else talking about how obnoxious the ladies of the manor really were. It's all just kind of there.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative.

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bisschen zäh, aber total interessant

[Kati Polodna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative without being overwhelmed.

[Michael Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Mark Girouard is the best and best-known authority on the phenomenon and institution of the English country house, Horn is undoubtedly the leading expert on the people who lived there. She’s also one of the very best authors when it comes to domestic history of the Victorian era, from the scullery maids in the basement kitchen to the children in the attic nursery. This book considers the place of the well-born (though not necessarily titled) lady and her place in proper society, how she was prepared for it, how she dealt with it, and what she secretly thought about it. They were a combination, by and large, of demanding authority figure and condescending chatelaine. The middle and upper classes of 19th-century Britain made rather a cult of domesticity, rebelling against the Regency period and modeling themselves after their vision of Queen Victoria, and they were big on manuals and lectures to make sure everyone understood what was expected. Horn takes a topical approach, with chapters on girls growing up, coming out in society and finding a mate, settling in as a wife and becoming a mother, playing the role of Lady Bountiful, engaging in leisure and entertaining, and -- as a result of the Great War and the general shake-up from top to bottom that it produced in society -- entering the professions and even politics. She focuses at times on a small number of well-known ladies who kept diaries or left memoirs, but her coverage is really pretty broad. Moreover, everything is footnoted, so this is an excellent place to begin in both Women’s Studies or general social history of the period.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like reading about how Daughters of the Manor was bought up and how their lives were like after their coming out to society and how their became ladies of the manor and how it all change when the first world war began.

[Allison]

what do ladies do all day in the country? and what do children do? what is life like for propertied women and children? also, courtship and marriage.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved how this told individual, personal stories instead of just facts. Fascinating!