The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato. Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before. Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.
Acts 9:17 reads, "Brother Saul, Jesus hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight." Saul had his need met by a man that was directed by God; some say that was a chance encounter. Sowing Precious Seed offers an insight into the passion of Helen Berry. Helen has been moved to carry the gospel wherever life took her. Being a nurse she mingled with people in need. As a good sower, she "scattered the seed," and as an eager harvester she sought to "gather in," being always alert to her Master's cause. This book demonstrates the power inherent in the blending of a devout soul in tune with the Lord, together with a heart of love for the unsaved. It documents those impacted by their encounter with Helen, and it shows that God still directs those who have a heart burning for Him. There are unusual circumstances and amazing encounters, which could be deemed to be "chance meetings," but which are clearly seen to be the hand of God, still directing secretly but certainly. Let those who read this book take care; it will bring not just admiration with what God can do through a devoted life, but will change your attitude to prayer and witnessing. It exhibits a life consciously dedicated to our Lord, a life we all ought to be living. Pastor James McAlees, Grace Bible Church, Las Vegas, Nevada Helen has always been involved in the area of church planting. Presently, she is helping start a church in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is an accomplished pianist; faithfully using the talent God has given her for His glory. She currently is a Gospel for Asia volunteer and enjoys working with children in Good News Clubs with Child Evangelism. Helen has two grown sons, Rusty and David.
Eighteenth-century London was teeming with humanity, and poverty was never far from politeness. Legend has it that, on his daily commute through this thronging metropolis, Captain Thomas Coram witnessed one of the city's most shocking sights-the widespread abandonment of infant corpses by the roadside. He could have just passed by. Instead, he devised a plan to create a charity that would care for these infants; one that was to have enormous consequences for children born into poverty in Britain over the next two hundred years. Orphans of Empire tells the story of what happened to the thousands of children who were raised at the London Foundling Hospital, Coram's brainchild, which opened in 1741 and grew to become the most famous charity in Georgian England. It provides vivid insights into the lives and fortunes of London's poorest children, from the earliest days of the Foundling Hospital to the mid-Victorian era, when Charles Dickens was moved by his observations of the charity's work to campaign on behalf of orphans. Through the lives of London's foundlings, this book provides readers with a street-level insight into the wider global history of a period of monumental change in British history as the nation grew into the world's leading superpower. Some foundling children were destined for Britain's 'outer Empire' overseas, but many more toiled in the 'inner Empire', labouring in the cotton mills and factories of northern England at the dawn of the new industrial age. Through extensive archival research, Helen Berry uncovers previously untold stories of what happened to former foundlings, including the suffering and small triumphs they experienced as child workers during the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. Sometimes, using many different fragments of evidence, the voices of the children themselves emerge. Extracts from George King's autobiography, the only surviving first-hand account written by a Foundling Hospital child born in the eighteenth century, published here for the first time, provide touching insights into how he came to terms with his upbringing. Remarkably he played a part in Trafalgar, one of the most iconic battles in British Naval history. His personal courage and resilience in overcoming the disadvantages of his birth form a lasting testimony to the strength of the human spirit.
Focusing on a largely unknown type of popular print culture that developed in the late 1600s-the coffee house periodical-Helen Berry here offers new evidence that the politics of gender, far from being a marginal or frivolous topic, was an issue of general interest and wide-spread concern to the early modern reader. Berry's study provides the first full length analysis of John Dunton's Athenian Mercury (1691-97), an influential specimen of the coffee-house periodical genre, as well as the original question-and-answer publication which addressed both men's and women's issues in one journal. As the chapter headings in this book indicate, the topics addressed in the "agony column" of the Athenian Mercury-for example, the body, courtship, and sex-are of enduring interest across the centuries. Berry's study of this periodical provides new insights into the gendered ideas and debates that circulated among middling sorts in early modern England. An historical survey of the social effects of mass communication in the early modern period, this volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing study of how gendered ideas and values were communicated culturally, particularly beyond the milieu of elite groups such as the nobility and gentry. It argues that the mass media was from its infancy an important means of communicating powerful messages about gender norms, particularly among the middling sorts. The study will appeal not only to historians, women and gender studies scholars and literature scholars, but also to scholars of publishing history.
Berry the Fruit Fairy is excited to enter a fashion contest, but when she overhears a secret, it may not be fair game in this Candy Fairies adventure. It’s a Candy Fairies Fashion Show! Top fashion designer Olivia Crème de la Crème is having a dress design contest and Berry the Fruit Fairy is one of the fairies chosen to make a delectably adorable new creation! When Berry overhears the secret plans for the designs, she thinks she’s got this contest won. But wait a sweet second—isn’t that cheating?
Historians of the long eighteenth century have recently recognised that this period is central both to the history of cultural production and consumption and to the history of national and regional identity. Yet no book has, as yet, directly engaged with these two areas of interest at the same time. By uniting interest in the history of culture with the history of regional identity, Creating and Consuming Culture in North-East England, 1660-1830 is of crucial importance to a wide range of historians and intervenes in a number of highly important historical and conceptual debates in a timely and provocative way. The book makes a substantial contribution to eighteenth-century studies. Not only do these essays demonstrate that in thinking about cultural production and consumption in the eighteenth century there are important continuities as well as changes that need to be considered, but also they complicate the commonplace assumption of metropolitan-led cultural change and cultural innovation. Rather than the usual model of centre-periphery diffusion, a number of contributions show that cultural change in the provinces was happening at the same time as in, or in some cases even before, London. The essays also indicate the complex relationship between cultural consumption and social status, with some cultural forms being more inclusive than others.
Longtime friends Helen Levine and Oonagh Berry decided they missed the tradition of "real" letters. The obvious solution for them was to initiate a correspondence project. Their goal? To write each other a longhand letter every two weeks for a year, and see what, if anything, they were missing in their usual friendship rituals of lunches, visits and telephone chats. The result is a wealth of insights yielded from over 150 years of combined life experience. Week in and week out, Helen and Oonagh weave together tales of family, work, politics, motherhood, aging and creativity. Reading Between Friends is like sharing a warm pot of tea with two frank, articulate and experienced companions.
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