Mrs England, the latest novel by Stacey Halls, takes a young nanny in what we think of as the golden age of Edwardian childhood into what should be a happy home and exposes the tensions beneath the rose-tinted surface. Stacey tells Historia what drew her to this era – and this subject. Though children have […]
Tokens of love: the moving objects left by mothers at the Foundling Hospital
Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars, writes for Historia about the inspiration behind her latest book, The Foundling: tokens left by mothers to help identify the babies they gave up at the Foundling Hospital in London. Some are beautiful, some simple, but all are poignant reminders of desperation and loss. A pink silk purse. A […]
An absence of presence: domestic records and The Familiars
Familiar things, like household accounts, can be the only traces that can lead us to the everyday lives of women in previous centuries. For author Stacey Halls, domestic records painted a detailed picture of 17th century life. In 1660, a pregnant woman named Alice Thornton had a dream in which the white sheet she slept […]