Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century

In this lively and extensively researched monograph, Sarah M.S. Pearsall sets out to discover ‘how families nurtured ties, sentimental and otherwise, in an Atlantic beset with considerable disruption, of which the American Revolution was one source among many’ (p. 5). As the British colonies in North America and the West Indies became ever more populous and prosperous over the course of the eighteenth century, more and more Anglo-American families became ‘Atlantic’, with parents and children, and husbands and wives enduring lengthy periods of separation as individuals travelled to the colonies or returned to the metropole in search of improved economic, social, and political opportunities. Simultaneously, the rise of the ideal of the companionate marriage and the shift from patriarchy to paternalism in child-rearing encouraged Anglo-Americans to sentimentalise family relationships, and to attempt to maintain these tender ties through the communications technology of the era—that is, through the writing of letters. Pearsall's goal is to explore the ways in which the Atlantic world shaped family life, and vice versa, and in this aim she is largely successful.