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Very Queer Family Indeed – Sex, Religion, and the Bensons in Victorian Britain (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

Very Queer Family Indeed – Sex, Religion, and the Bensons in Victorian Britain (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

by Simon Goldhill (Author)

  • New

    Illustrated 2016

    $37.41
Synopsis

We can begin with a kiss, though this will not turn out to be a love story, at least not a love story of anything like the usual kind. So begins A Very Queer Family Indeed, which introduces us to the extraordinary Benson family. Edward White Benson became Archbishop of Canterbury at the height of Queen Victoria's reign, while his wife, Mary, was renowned for her wit and charm the prime minister once wondered whether she was the cleverest woman in England or in Europe. The couple's six precocious children included E. F. Benson, celebrated creator of the Mapp and Lucia novels, and Margaret Benson, the first published female Egyptologist. What interests Simon Goldhill most, however, is what went on behind the scene, which was even more unusual than anyone could imagine. Inveterate writers, the Benson family spun out novels, essays, and thousands of letters that open stunning new perspectives including what it might mean for an adult to kiss and propose marriage to a twelve-year-old girl, how religion in a family could support or destroy relationships, or how the death of a child could be celebrated. No other family has left such detailed records about their most intimate moments, and in these remarkable accounts, we see how family life and a family's understanding of itself took shape during a time when psychoanalysis, scientific and historical challenges to religion, and new ways of thinking about society were developing. This is the story of the Bensons, but it is also more than that it is the story of how society transitioned from the high Victorian period into modernity.

$37.41

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
 Pages: 344
 Edition: Illustrated
 Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 04 Oct 2016
ISBN 10: 022639378X
ISBN 13: 9780226393780

Media Reviews
This bold, erudite, and highly original book takes as its principal subject the vast literary output of an extraordinary Victorian family--that of Archbishop Edward W. Benson and his wife and children, almost all of whom published extensively. Goldhill makes a series of brilliant forays into Victorian discussions of sex and sexuality, of religious belief and doubt, and of topics as engaging and complexly shaded as 'discretion' and 'indiscretion.' A Very Queer Family Indeed is, all told, a remarkable achievement--one that is both beautifully written and compulsively readable. --Christopher Lane, author of The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty
It is not often that page turner accurately describes academic histories of Victorian grandees. But, unlike most monographs, Simon Goldhill's A Very Queer Family Indeed begins with a kiss between Minnie Sidgwick and Edward White Benson after Benson had proposed marriage. The subsequent marriage laid the foundation of what Goldhill calls 'a very queer family indeed.' Despite achieving high positions in late-Victorian and Edwardian institutional life, the Bensons remained in, but not of, conventional life. This liminal position enables Goldhill to trace developments in writing, understandings of sexuality, and religion between 1840 and 1940.
--Anglican and Episcopal History
Author Bio
Simon Goldhill is professor of Greek and the director of the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the author of many books, including Freud's Couch, Scott's Buttocks, Bront 's Grave; How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today; and Love, Sex & Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives, all also published by the University of Chicago Press.