Farmers, consumers, innovators. The world of Joan Thirsk

Abstract

writes of a widowed, and then remarried Catherine Maria Bury of Charleville Castle, Co. Offaly, and her influence in the design, Gothic and picturesque in manner, of a country house in the first years of the nineteenth century. A further perspective is Edmund Joyce’s “Lady Harriet Kavanagh of Borris House, 1800–185, matriarch and guardian of the future”, who combined the rearing of many children and stepchildren, the running of an estate upon being made a widow, and travelling and collecting in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Further contributions are those of Ruth Larsen, on Georgiana and Harriet Cavendish, and the advice and support that they provided as sisters, mothers and aunts, and at essential moments of passage in family life cycles. Anna Pilz considers the art and practice of silvaculture at Coole Park, Co. Galway, through “‘Lasting monuments’: Lady Gregory’s domesticated landscape and forestry”. Lowri Ann Rees discusses how an unmarried woman owner and her sister faired in politically charged times in “‘I serve my God, and fear not man’: the Rebecca Riots and a female’s response to Welsh rural protest, 1843–4”. Ciaran Reilly examines the country house and the Great Famine, and the dissenting and provocative novel by Mildred Darby, of Leap Castle, The Hunger. Christopher Ridgway, meanwhile, investigates “Rosalind Howard, the contradictory countess of Carlisle”, whose stance was for suffragism, liberalism, temperance and home rule, and established a controversial and high-profile reputation. Regina Sexton turns to the accumulation and transmission of knowledge in the domestic arts in “Elite women and their recipe books: the case of Dorothy Parsons and her Booke of Choyce Receipts, all written with her owne hand in 1666”. Brendan Twomey writes on epistolary reflections on life for women in “‘I will do myself the pleasure of now writing to you’; Louisa Conollly’s letters to her sister, Sarah Bunbury”. Fiona White concludes the volume with “Louisa Moore of Moore Hall: a life in letters”, on a woman left to run and estate and raise a family, and then to advise and influence the subsequent generation.