Across their empire, the British spoke ceaselessly of deviants of undesirables, ne'er do wells, petit-tyrants and rogues. With obvious literary appeal, these soon became stock figures. This is the first study to take deviance seriously, bringing together histories that reveal the complexity of a phenomenon that remains only dimly understood.

Missionary families were an integral component of the missionary enterprise, both as active agents on the global religious stage and as a force within the enterprise that shaped understandings and theories of mission itself. Taking the family as a legitimate unit of historical analysis in its own right for the first time, Missionary families traces changing familial policies and lived realities throughout the nineteenth century and powerfully argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the missionary enterprise informed by the complex interplay between the intimate, the personal and the professional. By looking at marriage, parenting and childhood, along with professionalism, vocation and domesticity, this first in-depth study of missionary families reveals their profound importance to the missionary enterprise, and concludes that mission history can no longer be written without attention to the personal, emotional and intimate aspects of missionary lives. -- .

Missionary families were an integral component of the missionary enterprise, both as active agents on the global religious stage and as a force within the enterprise that shaped understandings and theories of mission itself. Taking the family as a legitimate unit of historical analysis in its own right for the first time, Missionary families traces changing familial policies and lived realities throughout the nineteenth century and powerfully argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the missionary enterprise informed by the complex interplay between the intimate, the personal and the professional. By looking at marriage, parenting and childhood; professionalism, vocation and domesticity; race, gender and generation, this first in-depth study of missionary families reveals their profound importance to the missionary enterprise, and concludes that mission history can no longer be written without attention to the personal, emotional and intimate aspects of missionary lives. -- .