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Article Dans Une Revue History of the Human Sciences Année : 2022

'Intelligible to the mind and pleasing to the eye': Mapping out kinship in British family directories (1660-1830)

Résumé

The Peerages and Baronetages were successful commercial directories sold by some prominent London booksellers since the beginning of the 18 th century. They provided an account of most titled families (peers as well as baronets). As serial publications, they were intended for a larger public in need of identification tools in a context of expanding urban sociability and of major recomposition within the elites. In these pocket books, there were no longer the elaborate tree diagrams which had ornamented most of the visitation books of the College of Arms and which still could be found among ancient family papers. Such a disowning was required for technical, commercial and also ideological reasons. Publishers' selling point was to provide an up-to-date account of the 'modern' families which could be better achieved through alphabetical listings, biographical discourses or tabular charts. However, this formal reconfiguration also led to many criticisms. These family directories were accused of compromising the dignity of titled families. The idea of a lost Golden Age when ancient lineages were exhibited on stone, wooden panels or vellum, regained some attraction among social commentators. After 1760, with the renewal of radicalism and the age of revolutions, tree thinking came to be rehabilitated but also reinvented to better defend and naturalise social hierarchies. In this context, trees were increasingly used as powerful national emblem and less as dynastic emblem. The changing fortune of family trees in the 18th cent British prints enable us to reflect on the ideological aspects of the visualisation of kinship.

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hal-03869895 , version 1 (24-11-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03869895 , version 1

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stephane jettot. 'Intelligible to the mind and pleasing to the eye': Mapping out kinship in British family directories (1660-1830). History of the Human Sciences, 2022. ⟨hal-03869895⟩
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