Sarah Fox, Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England (London: University of London Press, 2022). Pages xiv + 254 + illustrations 4, £40 hardback, £25 paperback, & open access.

Abstract

of women, and their families, when birth. on male-authored medical understanding of this key life-cycle event. It the tendency to think about the moment of delivery as ‘ birth ’ . it is shown here that birth was a series of interconnected events and experiences: a ‘ pro-cess ’ that brought together formed and reformed kinship groups and communities in transient and imagined spaces. Fox ’ s use of family letters and surviving personal evokes the physical and emotional experience of for in an of shifting social and demographic change and of changing theories.ChapterOne physicality of birth. s at of of labour substantiates might that, for the travail ’ derived to describe birth. Women relied instead on ‘ groaning ’ and ‘ grumbling ’ , accentuated both the physical and audible nature of