Foundling Sunday

Dr Rebecca Davies examines the more active role of eighteenth-century women in their children’s upbringing

Dr Rebecca Davies examines the more active role of eighteenth-century women in their children’s upbringing and education, comparing depictions of the maternal role in fiction with archival accounts of real mothers.

Her research places a particular focus on mothers who were separated from their children, due to conflicting social obligations or the will of the father. Her talk will examine maternal advice in letters to children away at school and legacies left by mothers in anticipation of their death, alongside novels from the period.

Following the talk, pianist Gisela Meyer performs a selection of works by Mussorgsky in the Picture Gallery, including The Seamstress, A Tea and Gopak of Joyful Fellows (Sorochintsky Fair).

Dr Rebecca Davies is a Teaching Fellow in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Written Maternal Authority and Eighteenth-Century Education in Britain: Educating by the Book (Ashgate, 2014), an investigation of the inconsistent literary representation of mothers in educative fiction of the Enlightenment era.

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