Once the province of the art historian, the country house has become the focus of all manner of scholarly investigations over the past forty or fifty years. Everything from the economics of estate management and the lives of domestic servants to the Jewish country house, the queer country house and the country house’s links to colonialism has come under scrutiny. We can trace the trend back to two books published in the late 1970s, Lawrence Stone’s Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 and Mark Girouard’s magisterial Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History, both of which encouraged academics to move beyond issues of provenance and authorship and explore the social structures that shaped the country house at different points in its history.

Anthony Fletcher and Ruth Larsen’s Mistress, an exploration of the role of elite women in country houses between the 16th and 20th centuries, is an enjoyable and important addition to the genre. Rather than looking at one woman and one house at a time, an approach adopted by Trevor Lummis and Jan Marsh in their pioneering Woman’s Domain: Women and the English Country House (1990), the authors opt for a thematic treatment, skilfully weaving eighteen case studies in and out of their narrative, which consists of three parts: ‘Duty, Desire and Discord, 1567–1701’, ‘Domesticity and Dynasty, 1702–1836’ and ‘Deference, Design and Distress, 1832–1918’ (apparently, the authors adore alliteration).

One or two of the leading characters will be familiar to country house fans – for instance, Theresa Parker, credited with turning Saltram in Devon into one of the great Georgian showpieces, and Mary Elcho, chatelaine of Stanway in the Cotswolds and a leading member of the Souls, who escaped