Faith, Duty, and the Power of Mind: The Cloughs and their circle, 1820-1960 - Softcover

Sutherland, Gillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521326362 ISBN 13: 9780521326360

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Attractively illustrated and engagingly written, this book tells the story of an English middle-class family and their fortunes. At its centre are two women: Anne Jemima Clough and her niece, Blanche Athena Clough. Their experiences show the particular vulnerability of middle-class women to economic reverse; and as first and fourth principals of Newnham College, Cambridge, their lives and work enact the revolution in women's education which allowed women too, at last to enter professional occupations and construct their own economic lifelines. Anne Jemima's brother and Blanche Athena's father was the poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, who lost his Christian faith painfully and publicly at the end of the 1840s. Yet loss of faith did not free these generations from a sense of duty. Rather it strengthened that sense, which fed in turn into the ethic and rhetoric of service which marked English professional life.

About this title

Review:

Review of the hardback: 'fascinating... Gillian Sutherland brings out skilfully the different temperaments and characters of her two subjects... Based on meticulous scholarship, her book can also beguile the reader with lively vignettes of Victorian and Edwardian domestic life.' The Times Literary Supplement

Book Description:

This book tells the story of an English middle-class family and their fortunes. Faith, Duty and the Power of Mind shows what it might mean to lose Christian faith in nineteenth and early twentieth century England, and is an unusually attractive and distinctive contribution to modern British history.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0521326362
• ISBN 13: 9780521326360
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 278