The Profligate Son: Or, a True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice, and Financial Ruin in Regency England - Hardcover

Phillips, Nicola

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199687536 ISBN 13: 9780199687534

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2013

Synopsis

William Jackson was a charming, popular public schoolboy with the world at his feet - until his attempts to keep up with his Regency dandy friends set him at odds with his family and led to his ruin. This absorbing account draws on papers that have lain in the archives for two centuries to reveal how an appalled father charted his son's descent into a murky underworld of debt, disease, prostitution and crime, culminating in his transportation to Australia for fraud.

About this title

Review

The Profligate Son held me spellbound from start to finish. Nicola Phillips brings the seamy side of Regency England to life with remarkable clarity, and her anti-hero William Jackson s headlong descent into a hell of his own making is so vivid and so foolhardy that more than once I wanted to reach into the book and shake some sense into him. A compelling read. --Adrian Tinniswood, author of The Verneys and The Rainborowes

Nicola Phillips has given us a compulsively readable story of a young man of good family who went dramatically astray in the fleshpots and gambling houses of Regency England. The book brings to life the glitter, the tawdriness, the promise and the heartbreak of the times in a way that few more conventional histories have done. At the same time it is a perceptive study of two flawed, headstrong men who had the signal misfortune to be father and son. --Margaret R. Hunt, Professor of History and Women s and Gender Studies, Amherst College

A gripping story of privilege and power, ungrateful sons and disappointed fathers in Regency England. Phillips brings the period to life with great authority and also sets the history in a thoughtful, modern context. A very enjoyable read. --Kate Mosse, author of the Languedoc Trilogy

“A tale of juvenile folly turning into serious crime is afforded by Nicola Phillips’s splendid The Profligate Son, .... [which] charts the boy’s chosen path to its sordid and inevitable end and in the process makes an age come wonderfully alive.” -- Henrik Bering, Wall Street Journal

“[A] terrific book ... told with style, flair and solid history.” -- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

“This is an engrossing tale of a Regency rake’s fast times and tragic unravelling that vivifies the history of Georgian England and colonial Sydney, Australia.” -- Publishers Weekly

“An immensely readable work of literary depths.” -- Kirkus Reviews

“A true Regency tale, with dollops of absorbing social, legal and criminal history thrown in, beautifully told. Warmly recommended.” -- London Historians

About the Author

Dr Nicola Phillips is an expert in gender history and a lecturer in the department of History and Politics at Kingston University. Her first book was on women in business from 1700 to 1850, and her research focuses on eighteenth-century gender, work, family conflict, and criminal and civil law. Nicola is also an advocate of public history. A co-founder of Kingston University's Centre for the Historical Record, she is also a member of the National Archives User Advisory Group and the Historical Association's Public History Committee, and has acted as a historical consultant for the National Trust, the Royal Mail, and Addidi Wealth Ltd. She has also contributed to radio and TV programmes on gender history.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0199687536
• ISBN 13: 9780199687534
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 362