These are the big 3 standards of social history for the era:
Stone, Lawrence, 1977. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. New York: Harper and Row.
Trumbach, Randolph, 1978. The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England. New York: Academic Press.
Ray Porter. 1990. English Society in the 18th Century.
The Porter? DYNAMITE. So very very readable. Entertaining even. *G* You can get an excerpt of it on Amazon HERE.
Just by reading the excerpt I think you'll recognize Mr. Bush. *G* And going through the Porter book especially, I think you will see the different lens that Hornblower is looking through when he looks at Bush. That whole bit in Commodore with Bush yelling for the rope to have a hanging and HH being all squicked out? Bush is SO John Bull at that point. So typically 18th century English. But modern readers ain't gonna get that unless they've done a lot of reading of English cultural history. It just comes off as Bush looking like a bloodthirsty asshole, when in fact HH is the one outside the cultural norm of his country and time. Which has an interesting benefit as a point of view (once you sift through the crazy).
OMG ICON!!!
Stone, Lawrence, 1977. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. New York: Harper and Row.
Trumbach, Randolph, 1978. The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England. New York: Academic Press.
Ray Porter. 1990. English Society in the 18th Century.
The Porter? DYNAMITE. So very very readable. Entertaining even. *G* You can get an excerpt of it on Amazon HERE.
Just by reading the excerpt I think you'll recognize Mr. Bush. *G* And going through the Porter book especially, I think you will see the different lens that Hornblower is looking through when he looks at Bush. That whole bit in Commodore with Bush yelling for the rope to have a hanging and HH being all squicked out? Bush is SO John Bull at that point. So typically 18th century English. But modern readers ain't gonna get that unless they've done a lot of reading of English cultural history. It just comes off as Bush looking like a bloodthirsty asshole, when in fact HH is the one outside the cultural norm of his country and time. Which has an interesting benefit as a point of view (once you sift through the crazy).