The Memoirs in cultural memory and historiography: Lucy Hutchinson and the people

ABSTRACT This essay explores the reception of Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson as a work supporting ‘the people’, in Nottinghamshire and nationally, from its first printing in 1806 to the opening of a new ‘Rebellion Gallery’ in Nottingham Castle. Setting such approaches against the top-down approach of some revisionist historiography, it makes a case for the continuing importance of her analysis of the Revolution. Through close attention to the manuscript of the Memoirs, it shows what care she took in formulating her understanding of the Revolution in Nottinghamshire as an alliance between a section of the gentry and the middle sort, and how her language reveals the tensions inherent in that alliance. A central aim is to show much can be gained by overcoming disciplinary divides between history, genre, gender and textual studies.

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