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LIFE IN AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COUNTRY HOUSE
LIFE IN AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COUNTRY HOUSE Author:Peter Hammond, Carolyn Hammond ? The only book on country house living in the 18th Century. — ? This is the period made so popular in Jane Austen's novels, Mansfield Park, Pride & Prejudice etc. — Grove House and its extensive estate in Chiswick were owned in the eighteenth century by Humphrey Morice, a not very successful politician and an animal lover. Carolyn and Peter Hammo... more »nd who have studied the country home for almost a decade have reconstructed the story of the house.
A wealth of period detail comes from the rare survival of letters written by the head groom to the lord of the house while he was in Italy for his health. They are a window into the daily life on the estate, describing the rather turbulent relationships between the servants in the house and the sometimes exciting events from the outside world. There was an attempted armed robbery, the theft of the walnut crop and the arrival of the Poor Law officers from a neighboring parish to attempt to force one of the stable lads to pay for an illegitimate child he had apparently fathered...
Here is real life in the country house during the period of English history, immortalized by the fiction of Jane Austen.« less