Ophelia Field
Their Progress Out of Boredom
Wives and Daughters: Women and Children in the Georgian Country House
By Joanna Martin
Hambledon & London 454pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
IN 1794, WHEN the seventeen-year-old Mary Strangways embarked on her intimidating new role as the mistress Penrice Castle, her sister Harriot’s survival advice was simply ‘not to think’. Examples of such obvious self-repression are rare in this book, which spans four generations of women (1730-1830), who lived in four grand properties: Redlynch in Somerset, Melbury and Stinsford in Dorset, and Penrice Castle in Glamorgan.
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