Sarah Knott

Welcome to a work of history unlike any other. Mothering is as old as human existence. But how has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures? What is the history of maternity—the history of pregnancy, birth, the encounter with an infant? Can one capture the historical trail of mothers? How? In Mother Is a Verb, the historian Sarah Knott creates a genre all her own in order to craft a new kind of historical interpretation. Blending memoir and history and building from anecdote, her book brings the past and the present viscerally alive. It is at once intimate and expansive, lyrical and precise. As a history, Mother Is a Verb draws on the terrain of Britain and North America from the seventeenth century to the close of the twentieth. Knott searches among a range of past societies, from those of Cree and Ojibwe women to tenant farmers in Appalachia; from enslaved people on South Carolina rice plantations to tenement dwellers in New York City and London’s East End. She pores over diaries, letters, court records, medical manuals, items of clothing. And she explores and documents her own experiences. As a memoir, Mother Is a Verb becomes a method of asking new questions and probing lost pasts in order to historicize the smallest, even the most mundane of human experiences. Is there a history to interruption, to the sound of an infant’s cry, to sleeplessness? Knott finds answers not through the telling of grand narratives, but through the painstaking accumulation of a trellis of anecdotes. And all the while, we can feel the child on her hip.

An Unconventional History

Mother Is a Verb

Matka, matula, mama... Oto fascynująca opowieść o roli matki na przestrzeni wieków. Sarah Knott zaskakuje i ożywia przeszłość, kolejne odkrycia zestawiając w szokującym kontraście z teraźniejszością. To intymny, liryczny, a jednocześnie bardzo dogłębny obraz macierzyństwa. „Począć, poronić, poczuć pierwsze ruchy płodu, nosić pod sercem, urodzić. A potem: przewijać, karmić, usypiać, nie dosypiać, dbać, dawać sobie przerywać, chodzić tam i z powrotem. One właśnie – czasowniki – najlepiej podsumowują instynktowną nieustanność macierzyństwa, kobiecej więzi z dzieckiem”. Zadając odważne pytania i analizując najbardziej przyziemne doświadczenia, autorka poszukuje uniwersalnej prawdy o byciu matką.

Niezwykła historia macierzyństwa

Matki

niezwykła historia macierzyństwa

In the wake of American independence, it was clear that the new United States required novel political forms. Less obvious but no less revolutionary was the idea that the American people needed a new understanding of the self. Sensibility was a cultural movement that celebrated the human capacity for sympathy and sensitivity to the world. For individuals, it offered a means of self-transformation. For a nation lacking a monarch, state religion, or standing army, sensibility provided a means of cohesion. National independence and social interdependence facilitated one another. What Sarah Knott calls "the sentimental project" helped a new kind of citizen create a new kind of government. Knott paints sensibility as a political project whose fortunes rose and fell with the broader tides of the Revolutionary Atlantic world. Moving beyond traditional accounts of social unrest, republican and liberal ideology, and the rise of the autonomous individual, she offers an original interpretation of the American Revolution as a transformation of self and society.

Sensibility and the American Revolution

When acclaimed historian Sarah Knott became pregnant, she asked herself this question. But accounts of motherhood are hard to find. For centuries, historians have concerned themselves with wars, politics and revolutions, not the everyday details of carrying and caring for a baby. These details matter- they shape our feelings and give structure to our hours. But they leave little historical trace. Much to do with becoming a mother, past or present, is lost or forgotten. Using the arc of her own experience, from miscarriage to the birth and early babyhood of her two children, Sarah Knott explores the ever-changing habits and experiences of motherhood across the ages. Drawing on a disparate collection of fascinating material - interrupted letters, hastily written diary entries, a line from a court record or a figure in a painting - Mother vividly brings to life the lost stories of ordinary women. From the labour pains felt by a South Carolina field slave to the triumphant smile of a royal mistress pregnant with a king's first son; from a 1950s suburban housewife to a working-class East Ender taking her baby to the factory; from a pioneer with eight children to a 1970s feminist debating whether to have any; these remarkable tales of mothering create a moving depiction of an endlessly various human experience.

Mother

Barbara Taylor

Did women have an Enlightenment? Historians have long excluded women from the Enlightenment orbit. However, competing images of 'Woman' loomed large in Enlightenment thought, and women themselves - as scientists and salonnières, bluestockings and governesses, political polemicists and novelists - contributed much to enlightened intellectual culture. This path-breaking volume of interdisciplinary essays by forty leading scholars provides a detailed picture of the controversial, innovative role played by women and gender issues in the age of light.

Women, Gender and Enlightenment

Sean Stewart Price

Eldon Doty

"Labels common stories about pirates as fact or fiction and teaches readers how to tell the difference between truth and rumors"--Provided by publisher.

Truth and Rumors

Pirates

Ένα βιβλίο που εξετάζει τη διαρκώς μεταβαλλόμενη εμπειρία της μητρότητας ανά τους αιώνες.

Μητέρες: Μια διαφορετική ιστορία της μητρότητας

What was mothering like in the past? When acclaimed historian Sarah Knott became pregnant, she asked herself this question. But accounts of motherhood are hard to find. For centuries, historians have concerned themselves with wars, politics and revolutions, not the everyday details of carrying and caring for a baby. Much to do with becoming a mother, past or present, is lost or forgotten. Using the arc of her own experience, from miscarriage to the birth and early babyhood of her two children, and drawing on letters, diaries, court records and paintings, Sarah Knott explores the ever-changing experiences of maternity across the ages. From the labour pains felt by an enslaved woman to the triumphant smile of a royal mistress bearing a king's first son; from a 1950s suburban housewife to a working-class East Ender taking her baby to the factory; these lost stories of mothering create a moving depiction of an ever-changing human experience. 'A joy to read' New York Times 'Timely and fascinating' Amanda Foreman 'Utterly compelling' Financial Times 'Knott manages to combine scholarship with personal experience in a heartfelt and original way. Every mother-to-be should read it' Sunday Times 'Wonderful... This is history at its best: writing that unfolds the past and sheds light on the present' Financial Times 'A stunning book, riveting from beginning to end' Diane Atkinson, author of 'Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes'

Sarah Knott

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