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The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder - Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R519
Discovery Miles 5 190
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The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder - Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England (Hardcover)
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Loot Price R519
Discovery Miles 5 190
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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In October 1726, newspapers began reporting a remarkable event. In
the town of Godalming in Surrey, a woman called Mary Toft had
started to give birth to rabbits. Several leading doctors - some
sent directly by King George I - travelled to examine the woman and
she was moved to London to be closer to them. By December, she had
been accused of fraud and taken into custody. Mary Toft's unusual
deliveries caused a media sensation. Her rabbit births were a test
case for doctors trying to further their knowledge about the
processes of reproduction and pregnancy. The rabbit births prompted
not just public curiosity and scientific investigation, but also a
vicious backlash. Based on extensive new archival research, this
book is the first in-depth re-telling of this extraordinary story.
Karen Harvey situates the rabbit-births within the troubled
community of Godalming and the women who remained close to Mary
Toft as the case unfolded, exploring the motivations of the medics
who examined her, considering why the case attracted the attention
of the King and powerful men in government, and following the case
through the criminal justice system. The case of Mary Toft exposes
huge social and cultural changes in English history. Against the
backdrop of an incendiary political culture, it was a time when
traditional social hierarchies were shaken, relationships between
men and women were redrawn, print culture acquired a new vibrancy
and irreverence, and knowledge of the body was remade. But Mary
Toft's story is not just a story about the past. In reconstructing
Mary's physical, social and mental world, The Imposteress Rabbit
Breeder allows us to reflect critically on our own ideas about
pregnancy, reproduction, and the body through the lens of the past.
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