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The Profligate Son: Or, a True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice, and Financial Ruin in Regency England

The Profligate Son: Or, a True Story of Family Conflict, Fashionable Vice, and Financial Ruin in Regency England

by NicolaPhillips (Author)

  • Used

    Illustrated 2013

    $3.27
Synopsis

In Regency England a profligate son was regarded as every parent's worst nightmare: he symbolized the dangerous temptations of a new consumer society and the failure of parents to instil moral, sexual, and financial self-control in their sons. This book tells the dramatic and moving story of one of those 'profligate sons': William Jackson, a charming teenage boy, whose embattled relationship with his father and frustrated attempts to keep up with his wealthy friends, resulted in personal and family tragedy. From popular public school boy to the pursuit of prostitutes, from duelling to debtors' prison and finally, from fraudster to convicted felon awaiting transportation to Australia, William's father (a wealthy East India Company merchant) chronicled every step of his son's descent into depravity and crime. This remarkable source provides a unique and compelling insight into the relationship between a father and son at a time when the gap between different generations yawned particularly wide. Diving beneath the polished elegance of Britain in Byron's 'age of surfaces', the tragic tale of William Jackson reveals the murky underworld of debt, disease, crime, pornography, and prostitution that lay so close beneath the veneer of 'polite society'. In a last flowering of exuberant eighteenth-century hedonism before the dawning of Victorian respectability, young William became disastrously familiar with them all. The Profligate Son combines a gripping tale with cutting-edge historical research into early nineteenth-century family conflict, attitudes towards sexuality, credit, and debt, and the brutal criminal justice system in Britain and Australia at the time. It also offers challenging analogies to modern concerns by revealing what Georgians believed to be the best way to raise young men, what they considered to be the relative responsibilities of parents and children, and how they dealt with the problems of debt during the first age of mass consumer credit.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
 Pages: 336
 Edition: Illustrated
 Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 24 Oct 2013
ISBN 10: 0199687536
ISBN 13: 9780199687534

Media Reviews
Phillips, who writes smooth and beguiling prose, declines to twist her story into a cautionary tale for our times, but the caution is there to be given its due consideration. * Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post *
[An] excellently researched book. * Susan Elkin, Independent *
The engine of this book is its author's empathy, but Phillips also has an eye for detail ... There is so much to admire here ... Phillips is an excellent historian. * Literary Review *
A tale of juvenile folly turning into serious crime is afforded by Nicola Phillips's splendid The Profligate Son ... which charts the boy's chosen path to its sordid and inevitable end and in the process makes an age come wonderfully alive. * The Wall Street Journal *
[A] terrific book...told with style, flair and solid history. * Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post *
A true Regency tale, with dollops of absorbing social, legal and criminal history thrown in, beautifully told. Warmly recommended. * Mike Paterson, London Historians *
[The Profligate Son] reads like a period drama. The reader is thoroughly engulfed in the family calamity in skilfully set scenes ... The 'will he, won't he' dilemma - whether he will help his son or leave him to the hell he has built of his own making - keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. A spellbinding read. * Julie Peakman, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine *
The Profligate Son held me spellbound from start to finish. Nicola Phillips brings the seamy side of Regency England to life with remarkable clarity, and her anti-hero William Jackson's headlong descent into a hell of his own making is so vivid and so foolhardy that more than once I wanted to reach into the book and shake some sense into him. A compelling read. * Adrian Tinniswood, author of The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England and The Rainborowes: One Family's Quest to Build a New England *
A gripping story of privilege and power, ungrateful sons and disappointed fathers, in Regency England. Phillips brings the period to life with great authority and also sets the history in a thoughtful, modern context. A very enjoyable read. * Kate Mosse, author of the Languedoc Triology *
Nicola Phillips has given us a compulsively readable story of a young man of good family who went dramatically astray in the fleshpots and gambling houses of Regency England. The book brings to life the glitter, the tawdriness, the promise and the heartbreak of the times in a way that few more conventional histories have done. At the same time it is a perceptive study of two flawed, headstrong men who had the signal misfortune to be father and son. * Margaret R. Hunt, Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College *
This is an engrossing tale of a Regency rake's fast times and tragic unraveling that vivifies the history of Georgian England and colonial Sydney, Australia. * Publishers Weekly *
An immensely readable work of literary depths. * Kirkus Reviews *
If ever there was a real-life embodiment of the rake's progress, it would appear to be William Jackson. He is the subject of Nicola Phillips's superb new book, which takes the form of a biography but also uses the life of Jackson-and also those around him-to explore various aspects of late-Georgian social, criminal, imperial, and sexual history. * Biography *
[A]n engaging ... micro-study of the real-life fortunes of one such Regency rake. ... we are treated to an engrossing tale that cleverly weaves aspects of social, cultural and family history with an analysis of intergenerational conflict in the early nineteenth-century. * Family and Community History *
Nicola Phillips tells this colourful tale well, but she also takes the opportunity at various points to describe the context in which the Jacksons moved. There is much to be learned in this book about the duties that a father was thought to owe to a son and vice versa; about the workings of the law, particularly in relation to debtors; about the process of transportation; and about the government of a colony in its earliest days. It is the work of an historian with a sure-footed knowledge of the period, and one who understands the value of archival research. * Leslie Mitchell, English Historical Review *
Author Bio
Dr Nicola Phillips is an expert in gender history and a lecturer in the department of History and Politics at Kingston University. Her first book was on women in business from 1700 to 1850, and her research focuses on eighteenth-century gender, work, family conflict, and criminal and civil law. Nicola is also an advocate of public history. A co-founder of Kingston University's Centre for the Historical Record, she is also a member of the National Archives User Advisory Group and the Historical Association's Public History Committee, and has acted as a historical consultant for the National Trust, the Royal Mail, and Addidi Wealth Ltd. She has also contributed to radio and TV programmes on gender history.