‘We Did Not Go’; Domestic Sociability in Early Nineteenth-Century Lutterworth, Leicestershire

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study of the diary of a middling woman in a rural provincial location in the 1820s, considers the operation of domestic visit culture and argues that the domestic realm was more expansive, productive, and heterosocial than other studies have suggested, characterized by widespread female mobility and agency. This article suggests that care for the sick provided as significant a motivation, location, and routine for provincial female sociable lives as courtship, religious observance, and commercial activity.