What do you think?
Rate this book
Common People: The History of an English Family
Shortlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize 'Part detective story, part Dickensian saga, part labour history. A thrilling and unnerving read' Observer 'Mesmeric and deeply moving' Daily Telegraph 'Remarkable, haunting, full of wisdom' The Times Family history is a massive phenomenon of our times but what are we after when we go in search of our ancestors? Beginning with her grandparents, Alison Light moves between the present and the past, in an extraordinary series of journeys over two centuries, across Britain and beyond. Epic in scope and deep in feeling, Common People is a family history but also a new kind of public history, following the lives of the migrants who travelled the country looking for work. Original and eloquent, it is a timely rethinking of who the English were - but ultimately it reflects on history itself, and on our constant need to know who went before us and what we owe them.
352 pages, Paperback
First published October 9, 2014
39 people are currently reading
667 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
January 1, 2015
I've done a little family tree investigating myself, and quickly found that my Victorian ancestors left no trace I could find except their names on census records. Too poor for a gravestone in the local churchyard, and living in houses that have long been demolished, I found it difficult to get close to them.
That didn't stop me thinking about them, and the sort of lives they would have led in the Suffolk villages they resided in.
Alison Light's book is about the investigation into her family tree - and as a historian she was able to fill in so many of the gaps in the lives of her ancestors. They too were 'the common people', who despite leaving little trace all had their stories to tell.
Light's great grandmother was born and lived her first 8 years in a Victorian Workhouse, a pauper of the Parish. It doesn't matter how much I read about these Workhouses, it is still deeply upsetting to hear how the children and adults were treated.
For example some well meaning ladies wanted swings put outside the Workhouse so the children could get some exercise. The swings were refused for two reasons - that the exercise would increase the children's appetite so they would eat more, and that it would wear out the leather on their shoes faster.
A couple of annoyances about the book - sloppy editing in that there were errors in either the text or the family trees at the front of the book meaning that the dates and ages didn't always agree. And why does a book published in England by Penguin books have American spellings throughout?
That didn't stop me thinking about them, and the sort of lives they would have led in the Suffolk villages they resided in.
Alison Light's book is about the investigation into her family tree - and as a historian she was able to fill in so many of the gaps in the lives of her ancestors. They too were 'the common people', who despite leaving little trace all had their stories to tell.
Light's great grandmother was born and lived her first 8 years in a Victorian Workhouse, a pauper of the Parish. It doesn't matter how much I read about these Workhouses, it is still deeply upsetting to hear how the children and adults were treated.
For example some well meaning ladies wanted swings put outside the Workhouse so the children could get some exercise. The swings were refused for two reasons - that the exercise would increase the children's appetite so they would eat more, and that it would wear out the leather on their shoes faster.
A couple of annoyances about the book - sloppy editing in that there were errors in either the text or the family trees at the front of the book meaning that the dates and ages didn't always agree. And why does a book published in England by Penguin books have American spellings throughout?
February 13, 2025
Looking back near the end of her quietly brilliant book, Alison Light observes "If anywhere can claim to be my ancestral home it is the workhouse." Moved after her father's death to study her family history, which she knew only in tiny fragments and the sorts of legends all families treasure, Light looked back into the 19th century at her maternal and paternal forebears, and opened a window onto the world we believe we have left behind - a world where the tiniest of misfortunes; sickness, a death, losing a job, can lead directly to the workhouse or asylum and a life of penury - and are quickly creeping into again with the destruction of the middle class around the world. For anyone who has worked on family history there is a lot to find pleasurably familiar here - the joy of making a big find, meeting people in dusty libraries or record offices eager to discuss their latest "hit," the endless fascination of records and history and prying the truth out of legends and lost memories. Light's forebears are all of our forebears - a few wastrels, a few pious folks, mostly very ordinary people struggling like mad to stay afloat in a world where a few wealthy parasites sneered about them and labeled them "residue", and who mostly vanished into the unmarked graves of paupers. Not just an exceptional read, but a very, very important corrective (which I don't really think she meant it to be) to the kind of politics too common today, the sort that lead directly back to the workhouse and the asylum and "residue."
November 1, 2015
In my mind, this book is exactly what family history should be. Light recounts the history of her family not just through anecdotes and data taken from census records but she recreates the world of the working poor in which her family lived. She researches workhouses, insane asylums, slums, and pauper’s graves. She describes the lives of bricklayers, Baptist preachers, domestic servants, and those in the navy. She reads local histories to understand how the geography of a place shaped her ancestors’ lives. Through Light’s research, she gains a better understanding of her ancestors and the worlds they inhabited.
I’ve always felt that while doing genealogy, you learn just as much about the history of society by the records your family leaves behind as you do about your ancestors--and sometimes, you may end up learning more about society than you do about your own family. Light demonstrates that genealogy is more than just names and dates but is really about bringing to light the lives of the “common people” and how politics, wars, religion and geography have affected the lives of everyday citizens.
I’ve always felt that while doing genealogy, you learn just as much about the history of society by the records your family leaves behind as you do about your ancestors--and sometimes, you may end up learning more about society than you do about your own family. Light demonstrates that genealogy is more than just names and dates but is really about bringing to light the lives of the “common people” and how politics, wars, religion and geography have affected the lives of everyday citizens.
April 6, 2016
Writing family histories has become such an industry over recent years that it's easy to become cynical about them. However, I tend to like them, along with TV programmes like'Who do you think you are?'. Alison Light's history of her family is one of the best mainly because it does what it says on the tin and celebrates and values the lives of 'common people'- the poor migrant working class living from hand to mouth often spending periods in workhouses and ending up in lunatic asylums. This is a fascinating picture of a range of working class trades, ranging from farm labourers, needle-makers, builders, servants, shoe makers, sailors etc. It shows the struggle and nobility of so many lives from birth to death as well as celebrating the strength and solidarity of slum communities and, in particular, the contribution of non-conformist churches and chapels in the 19th century.
January 3, 2016
My cousin gave this to me for my birthday, knowing my love of family history. It's a beautiful book by a scholar who understands the modern English working classes and applies her scholarship to her own family history. One of the difficulties of family histories is that they tend to look for the hints of prominence -- the ones who made a splash, married an earl, invented a widget. This history tells a lot of stories but doesn't succumb to that temptation. The stories are moving and rich, sad in the recurring ebb of fortunes that lands so many of them in the dreaded workhouse, but also full of survivals and thrivings.
January 29, 2016
If your dotty aunt - the one whose stories run along the lines of "and then your great aunt Flora's cousin Flora married that Murphy fellow but we never learned what became of him, but your uncle George is now a porter" - wrote a really excellent social history of the English workhouse poor, "Common People" would be it. She's an excellent writer, and her ancestors are fascinating, but the sudden shifts in perspective from one relative and one era and one location to another, every sentence or so, will make you nuts.
December 8, 2014
I've just finished reading this excellent book by Alison Light, Common People: The History of an English Family (published by Penguin, 2014).
Although mainly set around the Portsmouth area, it is well worth reading no matter where your ancestors hail from. The author examines her own family tree and makes observations on her own thought processes, methods etc which will resonate with all family history buffs.
This is not a story of the rich and famous, but of ordinary working class folks who had it hard, and overcame difficult obstacles while making their way in the world, some falling by the wayside and ending up in the workhouse, not because they were lazy or feckless, but because of unemployment, illness or injury, the lack of welfare and of opportunities to better themselves. She has looked deeply into the social conditions of the times, and muses on how her perceptions of family members changed as she came to understand more about their lives:
“Moral judgement rushes in when evidence is scarce. Edwin’s flurry of jobs need not mean that he was a wastrel. In London in the 1850s Henry Mayhew called the dockyard labourers ‘this most wretched class… mere brute force with brute appetites’, but he immediately contradicted himself by insisting that ‘the human locomotive’ could be fashioned from ‘anyone who wants a loaf and is wiling to work for it.’ He found ‘decayed and bankrupt master-butchers, master-bakers, publicans, grocers, old soldiers, old sailors…clerks’ reduced to labouring in a market flooded with casual labour. Far from being ‘shiftless’, a skiver or shirker, Edwin might have pulled out all the stops, taking any job he could. …On one occasion, Edwin admitted himself to the Portsea Union for four nights, a common strategy when relief would only be given to a family if the man entered the workhouse. It was also a way of saving money and food so that mother and children could survive and stay together.”
But as the author points out, ‘poverty homogenizes, …family history humanizes’.
She also discusses the nature of ‘family stories’ that get embroidered in the telling, that may or may not contain a nugget of truth. ‘Family history has its own mythologies…the idea of the family as sufficient unto itself remains a powerful and appealing fantasy’. I think we will all recognize the temptation to embellish the worthy, exciting, notorious, and to hide the less appealing, more mundane realities of our past.
I commend this book to all family historians.
Although mainly set around the Portsmouth area, it is well worth reading no matter where your ancestors hail from. The author examines her own family tree and makes observations on her own thought processes, methods etc which will resonate with all family history buffs.
This is not a story of the rich and famous, but of ordinary working class folks who had it hard, and overcame difficult obstacles while making their way in the world, some falling by the wayside and ending up in the workhouse, not because they were lazy or feckless, but because of unemployment, illness or injury, the lack of welfare and of opportunities to better themselves. She has looked deeply into the social conditions of the times, and muses on how her perceptions of family members changed as she came to understand more about their lives:
“Moral judgement rushes in when evidence is scarce. Edwin’s flurry of jobs need not mean that he was a wastrel. In London in the 1850s Henry Mayhew called the dockyard labourers ‘this most wretched class… mere brute force with brute appetites’, but he immediately contradicted himself by insisting that ‘the human locomotive’ could be fashioned from ‘anyone who wants a loaf and is wiling to work for it.’ He found ‘decayed and bankrupt master-butchers, master-bakers, publicans, grocers, old soldiers, old sailors…clerks’ reduced to labouring in a market flooded with casual labour. Far from being ‘shiftless’, a skiver or shirker, Edwin might have pulled out all the stops, taking any job he could. …On one occasion, Edwin admitted himself to the Portsea Union for four nights, a common strategy when relief would only be given to a family if the man entered the workhouse. It was also a way of saving money and food so that mother and children could survive and stay together.”
But as the author points out, ‘poverty homogenizes, …family history humanizes’.
She also discusses the nature of ‘family stories’ that get embroidered in the telling, that may or may not contain a nugget of truth. ‘Family history has its own mythologies…the idea of the family as sufficient unto itself remains a powerful and appealing fantasy’. I think we will all recognize the temptation to embellish the worthy, exciting, notorious, and to hide the less appealing, more mundane realities of our past.
I commend this book to all family historians.
April 29, 2016
I suppose when we go delving into our family histories, we hope to find the odd billionaire, a pirate, a famous actor or, at least, someone "interesting". "Interesting" and "rich" is a good combination. But most of us, like British author Alison Light, find solid citizens who live fairly quiet lives, passing along from one generation to another. A "family" that is actually a combination of tree limbs that come together to make one individual. We are a combination of all those who came before us. Alison Light, in her thoughtful book, "Common People", gives us brief histories of her forebears.
Light's ancestors really were "common people". Not an earl or pirate or rich guy among them. Most were economically of the working class (or sometimes lower in bad times), while some made inroads into the British middle class. Her "people", on both maternal and paternal sides, rode the wave of the economies of Victorian and 20th century England. Coming from Ireland, Wales, Birmingham, Portsmouth,and rural areas in southern England, they were often tossed in times of economic and societal need. Large families regularly lost members - young and old - to tuberculosis and other diseases that were particularly pernicious in the slums the families often lived in. Other family members spent time in "work houses", institutions for the real needy. Others died forgotten in the crude mental hospitals of the times. A few left for Australia - usually as penal deportees - but most spent their lives moving around the areas I've listed above. Curiously, no one seemed to end up in London.
Alison Light's extended family - from four or five generations back - really is the story of Britain and the affects of the Industrial Revolution. Her writing is always light and she tells the story of her people in almost a fictional way. But, her people were real, as are their stories. This is a really good book.
Light's ancestors really were "common people". Not an earl or pirate or rich guy among them. Most were economically of the working class (or sometimes lower in bad times), while some made inroads into the British middle class. Her "people", on both maternal and paternal sides, rode the wave of the economies of Victorian and 20th century England. Coming from Ireland, Wales, Birmingham, Portsmouth,and rural areas in southern England, they were often tossed in times of economic and societal need. Large families regularly lost members - young and old - to tuberculosis and other diseases that were particularly pernicious in the slums the families often lived in. Other family members spent time in "work houses", institutions for the real needy. Others died forgotten in the crude mental hospitals of the times. A few left for Australia - usually as penal deportees - but most spent their lives moving around the areas I've listed above. Curiously, no one seemed to end up in London.
Alison Light's extended family - from four or five generations back - really is the story of Britain and the affects of the Industrial Revolution. Her writing is always light and she tells the story of her people in almost a fictional way. But, her people were real, as are their stories. This is a really good book.
September 23, 2017
Historian Alison Light provides an excellent and readable venture into her own family's history, deftly demonstrating how one incorporates social history, local history, religious history, and more, to make ancestors come alive. She provides several very quotable phrases scattered thoughout the volume, certain to resonate with researchers adhering to the genealogical proof standard. My biggest complaint pertains to the "invisible endnotes" system employed by the editors. Readers deserve to know when something is being cited. The acceptable way of doing this is to provide a numbered footnote or endnote. I find the method employed by the editors lacking. In some places the author's aversion to religion manifested itself through condescending remarks. In other places where the opportunity presented itself, she refrained from such comments. This restraint maintained a bias-free environment in those portions of the narrative. Overall the book provided a commendable example in family history writing. Highly recommended.
May 28, 2015
I loved this book - largely because it is exactly the sort of book that I would love to write based on my own family history research. The author manages to weave together not only the stories of her various lines of ancestry - and in a way that doesn't leave your head spinning - but also the very personal reflections on the whole process of delving into aspects of the past.
December 1, 2015
I really liked this, Light users her own family history to illuminate the lives of the mass of British peoples dead relatives the ordinary labouring poor in the 19th C. She makes interesting points about the pursuit of family history too. Worth reading for historians and anyone with an interest in exploring their family history
March 26, 2018
For those of us who have done some research into our family trees it is often harder if you are born into the more common class, that of the common people. Alison Light had little idea beyond a few stories passed down about her grandparents when she embarked on her own project which was initially to find the grave of her grandmother who had died when her father was just a small child. The search was prompted by her father’s ill health and this initial search led her to wonder about her ancestors and what place they had in the world.
The author, like the majority of us I suspect, had no nobility or infamous people to seek out. She had some tales which hinted at better things, but nothing concrete and of course some of the historical research she undertook disproved the little she thought she knew. What she did find was the dates and places for the key events in a life; birth marriage and death. The beauty being that as a historian those snapshots in addition to some census records, enabled her to delve into the life of people as wide ranging as a needle maker who worked from home and a kitchen assistant on a ship.
Alison Light does a fantastic job of illustrating just how precarious life was for those who were common people when the death of a man could mean absolute devastation for a wife with young children with no family to support her. Even those with family were not immune these people living hand to mouth anyway making a living from seasonal work as and when they could find it. Not so very different from the zero hours contracts that we hear so much about nowadays!
Not only does the author give us a good picture of the lifestyle of those working class men and women, she also gives us an insight into the areas they lived in and how this did influence the type of work they did, none more so than towards the end of the book when she describes Portsmouth from her own childhood back in time when this was an important port for both the Merchant and Military Navy. In turn the neighbourhood in the wider sense is altered due to the absence of all the men who worked at sea leaving more of the dockside jobs to the older men but on the whole leaving a neighbourhood dominated by the women except when the men returned from their voyages.
Alison Light’s paternal family were on the whole staunch Baptists and the link between this church and the politics of the working class is knowledgeably explained. I had no idea of quite how closely entwined the pairing of the non-conformists and politics were although I could see the appeal of being preached to by a man from within your own community rather than the educated churchmen who played the same role in the Church of England.
There are inevitably sad stories from times when poverty, not only individual, but of entire areas meant that death was far more part of daily life, the lack of clean water and so many families living on top of one another meant that diseases like Tuberculosis spread unfettered. One of the saddest tales was that of a woman born into the workhouse, orphaned soon afterwards and who died decades later in the local asylum. However, the author is quick to remind us that as tempting as it is as family historians to get fixate on the death of an ancestor, it is the life they lead between the certificates that is far more enlightening.
Common People is the type of history I most enjoy, brilliantly researched and informative touching on the social lives of many of our ancestors but also acknowledging how important tracing our own families are to make sense of our place in the world. This is a book jam-packed full of details which informs and entertains throughout.
Common People is the tenth book I’ve read for my Mount TBR Challenge 2018 having been purchased in December 2017
The author, like the majority of us I suspect, had no nobility or infamous people to seek out. She had some tales which hinted at better things, but nothing concrete and of course some of the historical research she undertook disproved the little she thought she knew. What she did find was the dates and places for the key events in a life; birth marriage and death. The beauty being that as a historian those snapshots in addition to some census records, enabled her to delve into the life of people as wide ranging as a needle maker who worked from home and a kitchen assistant on a ship.
Alison Light does a fantastic job of illustrating just how precarious life was for those who were common people when the death of a man could mean absolute devastation for a wife with young children with no family to support her. Even those with family were not immune these people living hand to mouth anyway making a living from seasonal work as and when they could find it. Not so very different from the zero hours contracts that we hear so much about nowadays!
Not only does the author give us a good picture of the lifestyle of those working class men and women, she also gives us an insight into the areas they lived in and how this did influence the type of work they did, none more so than towards the end of the book when she describes Portsmouth from her own childhood back in time when this was an important port for both the Merchant and Military Navy. In turn the neighbourhood in the wider sense is altered due to the absence of all the men who worked at sea leaving more of the dockside jobs to the older men but on the whole leaving a neighbourhood dominated by the women except when the men returned from their voyages.
Alison Light’s paternal family were on the whole staunch Baptists and the link between this church and the politics of the working class is knowledgeably explained. I had no idea of quite how closely entwined the pairing of the non-conformists and politics were although I could see the appeal of being preached to by a man from within your own community rather than the educated churchmen who played the same role in the Church of England.
There are inevitably sad stories from times when poverty, not only individual, but of entire areas meant that death was far more part of daily life, the lack of clean water and so many families living on top of one another meant that diseases like Tuberculosis spread unfettered. One of the saddest tales was that of a woman born into the workhouse, orphaned soon afterwards and who died decades later in the local asylum. However, the author is quick to remind us that as tempting as it is as family historians to get fixate on the death of an ancestor, it is the life they lead between the certificates that is far more enlightening.
Common People is the type of history I most enjoy, brilliantly researched and informative touching on the social lives of many of our ancestors but also acknowledging how important tracing our own families are to make sense of our place in the world. This is a book jam-packed full of details which informs and entertains throughout.
Common People is the tenth book I’ve read for my Mount TBR Challenge 2018 having been purchased in December 2017
October 2, 2025
People disappear into the void pretty quickly after they die, unless they make a huge impact. The author has assembled a tremendous amount of research, finding whole streets of people she descends from who lived continuously on the edge of poverty and destitution, sometimes hauling themselves out for a generation, only to find their sons and daughters back there again, dying of what normally took the poor. She describes the frightening conditions of Victorian Portsmouth and lays out how little those in charge cared to make an effort towards comfort or stability for the "residuum".
Economic winds large and small blasted these people around and from the Earth, and the same for my people too...yet here we still are, in spite of everything, TB or epilepsy or an unfortunate fall wiping out generations of our folk.
It's a challenging book to read, in part because the tale is not continuous and could not be made to be so. The story is not a happy one and no one would expect it to be, with the facts laid out as they are. The author favours a long paragraph so expect to be facing some headwinds if you're a casual reader.
Economic winds large and small blasted these people around and from the Earth, and the same for my people too...yet here we still are, in spite of everything, TB or epilepsy or an unfortunate fall wiping out generations of our folk.
It's a challenging book to read, in part because the tale is not continuous and could not be made to be so. The story is not a happy one and no one would expect it to be, with the facts laid out as they are. The author favours a long paragraph so expect to be facing some headwinds if you're a casual reader.
March 31, 2021
A warning that my 5* rating is influenced by my interest in family history research.
Alison Light's book was listed among recommendations for a family history writing course I just started.
What a great discovery. It is exactly what I might seek to achieve with my own writing - not just the names and dates, but also the context of my ancestors' lives.
She has incorporated herself and her search in the history, which not everyone embraces, but I think it makes her book more readable. I appreciated her observations on family historians, and their motivations. Her deep dives into various trades/poverty and workhouses/maritime history/location history were fascinating. She is like Bill Bryson in this respect, another non-fiction writing I enjoy. She is also very thorough in researching her family branches, and also follows up neighbours, etc...
Some quotes:
Pg. xxix
"As I have written this book, many questions have weighed on my mind but one more than another other: why do we need these stories of people we can never know?"...
"As culture becomes more 'globalized', and migration becomes the norm, as more of us than ever live in cities, what do we want from those stories which both anchor us and tie us down, evoking lost ancestral places to which we can never return? Can there be a family history for a floating world?"
Good questions.
Alison Light's book was listed among recommendations for a family history writing course I just started.
What a great discovery. It is exactly what I might seek to achieve with my own writing - not just the names and dates, but also the context of my ancestors' lives.
She has incorporated herself and her search in the history, which not everyone embraces, but I think it makes her book more readable. I appreciated her observations on family historians, and their motivations. Her deep dives into various trades/poverty and workhouses/maritime history/location history were fascinating. She is like Bill Bryson in this respect, another non-fiction writing I enjoy. She is also very thorough in researching her family branches, and also follows up neighbours, etc...
Some quotes:
Pg. xxix
"As I have written this book, many questions have weighed on my mind but one more than another other: why do we need these stories of people we can never know?"...
"As culture becomes more 'globalized', and migration becomes the norm, as more of us than ever live in cities, what do we want from those stories which both anchor us and tie us down, evoking lost ancestral places to which we can never return? Can there be a family history for a floating world?"
Good questions.
November 18, 2024
had to read it for a college assignment so i sometimes found it boring but i have to be honest, it was brilliant and well conducted and i hope that i won’t remember it as a reading assignment but more as a book that made me grow and rethink social history and more particularly, family history.
November 17, 2023
Family history as public history is a great idea. Inspired deep dives into workhouses and the insecurities of free market economics.
January 2, 2015
On the whole I enjoyed this book...looking at a family in the context of history (political, economic etc) but there were times when I lost track of the family members as they were engulfed by the history. I suppose this is what happens in people's lives in the greater scheme of things...but the point of genealogy is to rescue the individual from total obscurity and sometimes I felt that the historical events were more important than the family members. I enjoyed both the I dividual and the historical detail but I'm not sure the 'blending process' was altogether successful.
April 3, 2019
Anyone who is interested in family history will find this a good read. Light is like many of us who have no letters, diaries, or personal items from ancestors. She researches social history and geography to piece together an engaging history of southern England. Her family history gave me lots of good ideas about further ways to research my own.
December 20, 2014
Excellent! Beautifully written / copy-edited, and seamless interweaving of background research with the author's family. A real model of how to do it.
May 27, 2025
I don’t know if it was her intention, but the author certainly presents a contrary picture of “Great” Britain than does Sir Winston Churchill in all of his many volumes about the empire of which he was so proud. For me it was also a revelation that the English aristocrats who so purposely oppressed the Irish over the centuries actually treated the “lower classes” of their own island just as indifferently at best.
That said, it’s a very good presentation of a genealogy about a family who lived in the coastal region around Portsmouth, England, since at least the seventeenth century. Despite orphanages, workhouses, “hospitals” for the insane, and a series of pauper burials, the author’s ancestors somehow maintained connections between the generations sufficiently for her to locate (most of) them three centuries back from herself. Essentially, it is a long saga about “farm workers and lace makers, carters and caulkers; women who made needles and plied them; saddlers and stay-makers; old ladies who washed sailors’ rig-outs, young ones who sorted paper and rags; bricklayers and builders, and so many servants; those who sailed to sea, who fed the engines and the men; shopkeepers and milk boys; paraffin sellers, barmaids, watermen, lifters and loaders and porters, and people who made everything from shirts to churches, and the roads they walked away on.” (p. 253)
The puzzle left hanging is how did she finance her own formal education to enable her to become Honorary Professor in the Department of English at University College, London, and a best-selling author? I cannot find where she cites her own father’s work, although he is the primary focus for her endeavor of research. Perhaps this is nitpicking, but it seemed a gap to have omitted a giant step of a family’s leap from centuries of generational poverty to advanced education.
I confess that I have also pursued family history. My book was self-published just about the time that Alison Light was beginning her own search. I also included a general history in which my ancestors participated, although I arranged my “story” differently from hers. So comparing her narrative to my own was inescapable. It pleased me that she put her people into the context of their “times.” She made me care for them all.
That said, it’s a very good presentation of a genealogy about a family who lived in the coastal region around Portsmouth, England, since at least the seventeenth century. Despite orphanages, workhouses, “hospitals” for the insane, and a series of pauper burials, the author’s ancestors somehow maintained connections between the generations sufficiently for her to locate (most of) them three centuries back from herself. Essentially, it is a long saga about “farm workers and lace makers, carters and caulkers; women who made needles and plied them; saddlers and stay-makers; old ladies who washed sailors’ rig-outs, young ones who sorted paper and rags; bricklayers and builders, and so many servants; those who sailed to sea, who fed the engines and the men; shopkeepers and milk boys; paraffin sellers, barmaids, watermen, lifters and loaders and porters, and people who made everything from shirts to churches, and the roads they walked away on.” (p. 253)
The puzzle left hanging is how did she finance her own formal education to enable her to become Honorary Professor in the Department of English at University College, London, and a best-selling author? I cannot find where she cites her own father’s work, although he is the primary focus for her endeavor of research. Perhaps this is nitpicking, but it seemed a gap to have omitted a giant step of a family’s leap from centuries of generational poverty to advanced education.
I confess that I have also pursued family history. My book was self-published just about the time that Alison Light was beginning her own search. I also included a general history in which my ancestors participated, although I arranged my “story” differently from hers. So comparing her narrative to my own was inescapable. It pleased me that she put her people into the context of their “times.” She made me care for them all.
November 15, 2022
3.5
Fascinating as an example of researching and contextualising family history.
I enjoyed the social history, including insights into needle making (and the curious gender-split of tasks involved in the process), the development of the Baptist Church, workhouses, and the industry and personnel of dockyards. I also enjoyed the snapshots of 'common people' (Light's ancestors), whom she treats with warmth and consideration.
Early on, I had to accept I was not going to follow the sporadic expositions of lineage. Names are repeated across generations, which is to be expected but exacerbates the challenge. Cross-referencing long lists of name to the many branches of family tree depicted at the start of the book is tricky, and I decided it wasn't worth the investment of time and effort. No regrets. The social history - the contextualising of Light's ancestors - is compelling in itself.
The narrative can feel quite disjointed. I'm sympathetic to Light, because the stories of her ancestors inevitably jump between places and times. She has woven her research findings together by inserting ad hoc commentary and reflection. I found some of these inclusions to be thought provoking (particularly in the Postscript, which felt like the right place for them), but I found many to be too emotion-laden for my taste. Perhaps verging on self-indulgent.
I don't feel the same burden or duty to my ancestors as Light does to hers. I don't feel particularly invested in any of my ancestors' lives - they are long gone and I never knew them. I'm interested in them and in how much I can discover about them, but I don't really apply value judgements to their lives, or dwell on the philosophy of genealogy. I'm sure other readers will have enjoyed the more emotive sections - they just weren't to my taste.
Nonetheless, Light has inspired me to look again at my own family history, and has given me ideas about how and why I might do so. For this I am grateful.
Fascinating as an example of researching and contextualising family history.
I enjoyed the social history, including insights into needle making (and the curious gender-split of tasks involved in the process), the development of the Baptist Church, workhouses, and the industry and personnel of dockyards. I also enjoyed the snapshots of 'common people' (Light's ancestors), whom she treats with warmth and consideration.
Early on, I had to accept I was not going to follow the sporadic expositions of lineage. Names are repeated across generations, which is to be expected but exacerbates the challenge. Cross-referencing long lists of name to the many branches of family tree depicted at the start of the book is tricky, and I decided it wasn't worth the investment of time and effort. No regrets. The social history - the contextualising of Light's ancestors - is compelling in itself.
The narrative can feel quite disjointed. I'm sympathetic to Light, because the stories of her ancestors inevitably jump between places and times. She has woven her research findings together by inserting ad hoc commentary and reflection. I found some of these inclusions to be thought provoking (particularly in the Postscript, which felt like the right place for them), but I found many to be too emotion-laden for my taste. Perhaps verging on self-indulgent.
I don't feel the same burden or duty to my ancestors as Light does to hers. I don't feel particularly invested in any of my ancestors' lives - they are long gone and I never knew them. I'm interested in them and in how much I can discover about them, but I don't really apply value judgements to their lives, or dwell on the philosophy of genealogy. I'm sure other readers will have enjoyed the more emotive sections - they just weren't to my taste.
Nonetheless, Light has inspired me to look again at my own family history, and has given me ideas about how and why I might do so. For this I am grateful.
February 1, 2019
This is a very niche book, I think. Had I not come to it with a special interest in family history, I would probably not have had the patience to read to the end. However, working on my own English ancestry as I am, I really enjoyed following the author's process of investigation and observing how she created a narrative out of what she found.
The book shows how much rich contextual detail can be found through researching various sources. For example, in describing where a particular couple live, she supplies the names and occupations of all the neighbours in the street, recounts the historical background of the town, explains what the town is currently contending with in terms of economic or climatic pressures, and sketches a good word picture of what the streets and houses look like. I learnt a lot about storytelling in genealogy from her treatment of the material. Also, about drilling down into the cultural roots of my present family and why we value the things we do.
For the general reader, this book throws light on several specific aspects of English social history. There is a fascinating section on how the industrial revolution affected spinners, weavers and seamstresses in the north, and an equally illuminating section on religious dissenters. I feel that my understanding of life in England during the 18th and 19th centuries was greatly enriched, whetting my appetite for more non-fiction as well as fiction from this era and setting.
The book shows how much rich contextual detail can be found through researching various sources. For example, in describing where a particular couple live, she supplies the names and occupations of all the neighbours in the street, recounts the historical background of the town, explains what the town is currently contending with in terms of economic or climatic pressures, and sketches a good word picture of what the streets and houses look like. I learnt a lot about storytelling in genealogy from her treatment of the material. Also, about drilling down into the cultural roots of my present family and why we value the things we do.
For the general reader, this book throws light on several specific aspects of English social history. There is a fascinating section on how the industrial revolution affected spinners, weavers and seamstresses in the north, and an equally illuminating section on religious dissenters. I feel that my understanding of life in England during the 18th and 19th centuries was greatly enriched, whetting my appetite for more non-fiction as well as fiction from this era and setting.
November 4, 2017
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2882781.html
This is a great work of social and personal history. Light has taken her four grandparents and traced the genealogy of each as far back as she can go. None of them were from the well-chronicled upper or middle classes; she remarks that if anywhere can claim to be her ancestral home, it is the workhouse, as someone from every generation ended up there. She gradually zooms in on Portsmouth as the focal point of the story, but not before travelling around the middle and south of England in general. Where there may be personal data lacking, she diverges into intense history of the disruptive effect of the Industrial Revolution on society, the precise details of needle-making, the life prospects of the building labourer, the reality of the Navy in the tweentieth century; and she humanises these sweeping sources of data with moving empathy for her own ancestors and their fellow citizens. It's a tremendous piece of work, both sad and uplifting, demonstrating that historical writing can almost completely avoid the great and the good and still be really memorable. Strongly recommended.
This is a great work of social and personal history. Light has taken her four grandparents and traced the genealogy of each as far back as she can go. None of them were from the well-chronicled upper or middle classes; she remarks that if anywhere can claim to be her ancestral home, it is the workhouse, as someone from every generation ended up there. She gradually zooms in on Portsmouth as the focal point of the story, but not before travelling around the middle and south of England in general. Where there may be personal data lacking, she diverges into intense history of the disruptive effect of the Industrial Revolution on society, the precise details of needle-making, the life prospects of the building labourer, the reality of the Navy in the tweentieth century; and she humanises these sweeping sources of data with moving empathy for her own ancestors and their fellow citizens. It's a tremendous piece of work, both sad and uplifting, demonstrating that historical writing can almost completely avoid the great and the good and still be really memorable. Strongly recommended.
August 4, 2019
Amazing research went into this book. She didn't just have census records and vital records, she found out what their homes were like and when they spent time in the workhouses because of their poverty, and what their occupations or lack thereof were like.
This book is an extensive exploration of the lives of ordinary people, mostly living in Portsea Island, Portsmouth, England, that would be a great resource for family historians (even if their people did not live in that part of England) and for writers of historical fiction.
I am very impressed at what she was able to find out about people that you would ordinarily think left little or no record of their lives. I won't be looking at my ancestors occupations (as listed in the English census records) in anything like the same way again after reading this book.
This book is an extensive exploration of the lives of ordinary people, mostly living in Portsea Island, Portsmouth, England, that would be a great resource for family historians (even if their people did not live in that part of England) and for writers of historical fiction.
I am very impressed at what she was able to find out about people that you would ordinarily think left little or no record of their lives. I won't be looking at my ancestors occupations (as listed in the English census records) in anything like the same way again after reading this book.
May 16, 2023
Sometimes you buy a book and start to read but it just fails to hold your attention so you leave it aside. Later looking for a read I picked this up again and am I glad that I did.
Light has an excellent writing style and a real gift for research. It is styled as a family history but it is so much more. She brings her many a varied ancestors to life but she also gives us a brilliant social history of their times.
She does not gloss the forebears but rather gives us a human portrait of the ups and more often downs of their very real lives. Her picture of them in workhouse and asylum are well drawn, sympathetic and moving. She very rightly reminds us not to judge these people by the way circumstances treated them.
This is a book of REAL history, not kings, ministers and Gentry although all of them had hands to varying degrees in the family lives depicted.
Light has an excellent writing style and a real gift for research. It is styled as a family history but it is so much more. She brings her many a varied ancestors to life but she also gives us a brilliant social history of their times.
She does not gloss the forebears but rather gives us a human portrait of the ups and more often downs of their very real lives. Her picture of them in workhouse and asylum are well drawn, sympathetic and moving. She very rightly reminds us not to judge these people by the way circumstances treated them.
This is a book of REAL history, not kings, ministers and Gentry although all of them had hands to varying degrees in the family lives depicted.
September 18, 2025
This will definately go down as one of my top 10 reads of the year!
I am a keen genealogist so obviously the book was of interest to me but this is so well researched and so much information I was hooked from the offset.
Even better it mentioned Lifford Lane during the early 1900's where I have a family connection to and also the family of Charles Reading/Redding who were in Alcester / Coughton who I recognised from a family tree I helped a friend research and was so pleased we got our info right!
I particularly enjoyed the detail on the places and the history of the Baptist movement, needle industry and the sailing / navy in Portsmouth area.
A must read for any genealogist or social historian.
I am a keen genealogist so obviously the book was of interest to me but this is so well researched and so much information I was hooked from the offset.
Even better it mentioned Lifford Lane during the early 1900's where I have a family connection to and also the family of Charles Reading/Redding who were in Alcester / Coughton who I recognised from a family tree I helped a friend research and was so pleased we got our info right!
I particularly enjoyed the detail on the places and the history of the Baptist movement, needle industry and the sailing / navy in Portsmouth area.
A must read for any genealogist or social historian.
October 28, 2021
As other reviewers point out, this book skips around way too much between different ancestors and locales, and time periods, often in the same paragraph. It really bogged me down as a casual reader. BUT the idea of ancestral research focusing on the "common people" of England, especially just before, during, and after the industrial revolution was great. Light tells you what like was like for her ancestors in poorhouses, asylums, and slums. The section that focused on the Baptist church in England and its appeal to the working class (promoting literacy and labor reform) was great.
December 3, 2018
This book is a useful read for anyone interested in their own origins. An objective book it lacks neither context nor humanity. The diverse and sometimes scattered people who we comprise of, have in Light's case been identified and researched for good or bad. She sees merit in the contribution of those who succeeded, and those who didn't. This is how family history should be written.
March 8, 2020
A very interesting insight into why we are fascinated by family history and the search for a shared past. Alison Light has also managed to produce a powerful social and political history of the extraordinary, not so Common' people from which the majority of us originate. The wonderful everyday lives that forged the 18th and 19th Century.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews