Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Books => Topic started by: The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers on January 23, 2004, 07:45:15 AM
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So... some time ago I was going to write a sample chapter and outline for a text book with this title for a crowd aged 7-14 (I think, have to relocate the papers, which I doubt I still have in the first place). My obvious first chapter was going to be queens. Since I had Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, and uh... Elizabeth's sister, can't remember her name.
However, the outline was going to be a problem. I have a sample book from the line on Women in the American Revolution (during the era) and so I know the style, but the requirements specifically said they wanted a lot of named historical figures, of all categories. This means I need to talk about women peasants, mniddle class, nobility, foreigners, (just to name a few categories) and need to have some named figures from each of these to talk about. The problem is, I don't even know where to begin looking for named people who aren't nobility in this era. I mean, there's Shakespeare's wife, but we don't know anything about her besides her name and that she was left there.
IF I decide to pursue this (because they just sent me an email seeing if I'm still interested), do any of you have any advice? I remember just dropping it because I didn't feel like I had the time ti figure out a lot of answers, but at this point, the money would be REALLY nice. So I need to have something to show them soon. Any input?
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Well your going to have to reconstruct the daily routine of the average person in Elizabethan England.
What is it that a woman farmer would do, a young girl, an old woman. I would suggest creating names and hypothetical people to work from. Also the church kept good records of births marriages and deaths
There are books and papers about daily life and you can work from them.
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well, yes, I know I have to recontruct the daily routine. Isn't that what I said I was doing?
The problem hypothetical women won't work for this publisher. I can't just grab a name and run with it. I need to give an example of the person himself. I don't even know how we'd have such a thing. THe percentage of those who worked the land who were even literate would be so tiny, then factor in that it has to be a WOMAN at the turn of the 17th century ... and then the chance that one of them kept a record of his life? The only other hope is that somewhere, some peasant did something that caught a noble's eye and he wrote down about it. But I'm not aware of any stories.
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We have a record of my family, on the scottish side, back to 1770. IIRC it only starts including women around the 3rd generation or so, but i could check for you.
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1770 isn't nearly far enough. Elizabeth was queen at the end of the 16th century.
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I've traced some of my Scottish ancestors, who were sure to have been crofters, to about 1590. You could use the names if you like, but Scotland was very different from England at the time (they tended to be at least 100 years behind in fashion and technology, at least in the outlying areas like Campbeltown, where my family was) and that wouldn't help you if you need it to be in England. Plus, I've been having trouble myself finding much more than names and places. It was good to see the places myself when I went over there, to get an idea of the technology they had to work with, but I fear I've only scratched the surface.
... Nope, nevermind, I just checked and the earliest Clarks were born in 1650, and the earliest Templetons, who I thought went back a little further, don't even go back that far. Though it would make for some interesting book fodder (which I plan on doing someday) as the Kyntire peninsula (on the West Coast, where Campbeltown is today) was in hot disputation at the time, and many people died of plague and war. Because of this, the landlords started importing lowlanders in to be crofters, which is how my Blairs came to the area, and which caused some strife between the lowlanders and highlanders.
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I'm thinking I'm giving up. I remember etting a lot of books on Elizabethan culture and history and not finding any names of people.
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You might want to check out Marc Aronson's Sir Walter Ralegh and the Search for El Dorado, a YA nonfic book. It's well-researched, and of course the subject is a man, but he might have some good sources you may not have run into.