Like many gentlemen of his time, Charles Darwin married his first cousin. In fact, marriages between close relatives were commonplace in nineteenth-century England, and Adam Kuper argues that they played a crucial role in the rise of the bourgeoisie. "Incest and Influence" shows us just how the political networks of the eighteenth-century aristocracy were succeeded by hundreds of in-married bourgeois clans - in finance and industry, in local and national politics, in the church, and in intellectual life. In a richly detailed narrative, Kuper deploys his expertise as an anthropologist to analyze kin marriages among the Darwins and Wedgwoods, in Quaker and Jewish banking families, and in the Clapham Sect and their descendants over four generations, ending with a revealing account of the Bloomsbury Group, the most eccentric product of English bourgeois endogamy. These marriage strategies were the staple of novels, and contemporaries were obsessed with them. But there were concerns. Ideas about incest were in flux as theological doctrines were challenged. For forty years Victorian parliaments debated whether a man could marry his deceased wife's sister. Cousin marriage troubled scientists, including Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton, provoking revolutionary ideas about breeding and heredity. This groundbreaking study brings out the connection between private lives, public fortunes, and the history of imperial Britain.
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"Brings an anthropologists understanding to what he calls `one of the great neglected themes' of social and literary history: this preference of the English bourgeoisie for marriage with relatives...What he offers in this entertaining study is less an argument that an important aperçu."
--Times Literary Supplement, 20 January 2010
--Times Literary Supplement, 20 January 2010
About the Author
Adam Kuper is a Fellow of the British Academy.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Incest & Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England, by Adam Kuper (Harvard University Press, 2009)
If you have ever wondered how so many Victorian families of modest antecedents achieved eminence, or how self-made men of that time consolidated their fortunes, or if you have pondered on the reality of cousins marrying each other in the nineteenth-century novel, then this book has the answers.
As the title suggests, Kuper looks closely at the custom of intermarriage, especially cousin marriage among eminent families in the nineteenth century. Focusing particularly on the Wedgwoods and Darwins, he shows how `keeping it in the family' helped to promote bourgeois dynasties. Following family lines into the early twentieth century he also looks at the rise of the Liberal urban bourgeoisie associated with Bloomsbury, London, and reasons for its decline.
The modern-day rejection of cousin marriage, on the grounds of heredity and the danger of passing on physical or mental disability, is traced back to Charles Darwin's research and in particular his widely-read On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). Kuper tests these fears and concludes that insufficient evidence exists to prove that disabilities are significantly more numerous among the progeny of intermarriage than elsewhere. The reasons for the decline of intermarriage are attributed instead to the smaller number of large families, notably from the second decade of the twentieth century onwards. Quite simply, there were fewer eligible cousins.
This book is extremely well-researched and includes helpful diagrams of intermarriage relationships, which at times were extremely complicated. The endnotes are presented in a very clear manner, with running heads directing the reader to the appropriate page in the text. It is a volume to return to again, and again.
Dr Irene Wiltshire
If you have ever wondered how so many Victorian families of modest antecedents achieved eminence, or how self-made men of that time consolidated their fortunes, or if you have pondered on the reality of cousins marrying each other in the nineteenth-century novel, then this book has the answers.
As the title suggests, Kuper looks closely at the custom of intermarriage, especially cousin marriage among eminent families in the nineteenth century. Focusing particularly on the Wedgwoods and Darwins, he shows how `keeping it in the family' helped to promote bourgeois dynasties. Following family lines into the early twentieth century he also looks at the rise of the Liberal urban bourgeoisie associated with Bloomsbury, London, and reasons for its decline.
The modern-day rejection of cousin marriage, on the grounds of heredity and the danger of passing on physical or mental disability, is traced back to Charles Darwin's research and in particular his widely-read On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). Kuper tests these fears and concludes that insufficient evidence exists to prove that disabilities are significantly more numerous among the progeny of intermarriage than elsewhere. The reasons for the decline of intermarriage are attributed instead to the smaller number of large families, notably from the second decade of the twentieth century onwards. Quite simply, there were fewer eligible cousins.
This book is extremely well-researched and includes helpful diagrams of intermarriage relationships, which at times were extremely complicated. The endnotes are presented in a very clear manner, with running heads directing the reader to the appropriate page in the text. It is a volume to return to again, and again.
Dr Irene Wiltshire
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Clapham and Bloomsbury
20 Sep 2009
By John F. Leamons
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A great many out-of-the-way facts have tumbled out of Adam Kuper's brain and have collected in this book. Kuper intimates that these facts are connected but leaves it to the reader to work out the connection. Part anthropology, part legal history, part social history, part clinical genetics and part downright gossip, the book is at times in danger of becoming a string of names.
The book has two main lobes. The first is an account of the marital relationships of the members of the Clapham Sect; the second, an account of the sexual relationships of the members of the Bloomsbury Group. Connecting these two lobes is the figure of Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had relationships of neither sort. Clearly, then, the book is focused on the England of the long nineteenth century and interwar period. But the author makes lightning forays into other times and places, informing the reader, for example, that in 2005 Texas banned marriages between first cousins. (He does not say what urgent public policy considerations lay behind the legislation.) Although Kuper is mainly concerned with families--select English families--he does sketch a few individuals, and does so with skill and shrewdness, in the manner of a clinical psychologist--detached, yet sympathetic in a professional way.
If you are in doubt whether this book is worth an hour-and-a-half of your time, read its three-page prologue, which describes how Charles Darwin came to marry Emma Wedgwood, his cousin and sister-in-law. It's a miniature masterpiece. It really is. Once you've read it, you'll have to read on. If at any time the strings of names get you down, skip ahead!
The book has two main lobes. The first is an account of the marital relationships of the members of the Clapham Sect; the second, an account of the sexual relationships of the members of the Bloomsbury Group. Connecting these two lobes is the figure of Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had relationships of neither sort. Clearly, then, the book is focused on the England of the long nineteenth century and interwar period. But the author makes lightning forays into other times and places, informing the reader, for example, that in 2005 Texas banned marriages between first cousins. (He does not say what urgent public policy considerations lay behind the legislation.) Although Kuper is mainly concerned with families--select English families--he does sketch a few individuals, and does so with skill and shrewdness, in the manner of a clinical psychologist--detached, yet sympathetic in a professional way.
If you are in doubt whether this book is worth an hour-and-a-half of your time, read its three-page prologue, which describes how Charles Darwin came to marry Emma Wedgwood, his cousin and sister-in-law. It's a miniature masterpiece. It really is. Once you've read it, you'll have to read on. If at any time the strings of names get you down, skip ahead!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Endogamy With a Vengeance
28 Oct 2011
By bibliophile
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book traces the tangled web of intermarriage among a number of Georgian and Victorian families in England: the Darwins and the Wedgewoods, for example, were linked by marriage through several generations. The families which which Kuper deals were prominent indeed, including some of Britain's best known writers, statesmen, bankers, and other influential figures. All practiced endogamy with a vengeance, within the limits of the law---in Britain and in Europe the marriage of first cousins has never been outlawed. Kuper's title, while catchy, is misleading: the marriage of first cousins is not incest except in about five states of the U.S. He discusses few if any incidents of genuine incest (siblings, parent/child, uncle/neice, etc.). He does, however, discuss the family question which most vexed both the Victorians and 19th century Americans: May a man marry his deceased wife's sister?
Kuper is an anthropologist, and has done his work carefully, yet manages to write in an engaging and accessible style. He includes several genealogical charts, but they are laid out in a style which may (or may not) be familiar to anthropologists, but is puzzling to genealogists.
All in all, it's a very interesting and informative read, and gives a good reading of the "back story" of Victorian politicking.
Kuper is an anthropologist, and has done his work carefully, yet manages to write in an engaging and accessible style. He includes several genealogical charts, but they are laid out in a style which may (or may not) be familiar to anthropologists, but is puzzling to genealogists.
All in all, it's a very interesting and informative read, and gives a good reading of the "back story" of Victorian politicking.
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