Delia's Journey - Russell Clark, Caroline

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Résumé :
The story of actual people living in the West Riding of Yorkshire, this is historical fiction revealing the lives of an ordinary clothier and his family living between Halifax and Huddersfield in the early nineteenth century. Telling the affairs of Thomas Mellor, this work is historical fiction. It follows Thomas and his family as he struggles through the political unrest during the Napoleonic War and then faces financial ruin as the harvests fail and prices rise. A relative is hung for a political assassination witnessed by his children. The technology of the woollen industry is changing rapidly and unable to make the necessary investment he is pursued for his debts. After a riot and an assassination, he faces a debtor's trial in London and incarceration in Kings Bench Prison at the same time as Charles Dickens father was held in Marshalsea Prison next door. After his return, his 7 children grow up and start their own families. Their religious lives contribute to their increasing disillusionment with their lowly status as Dissenters in Anglican Britain. Eventually the entire family of grandparents, 1 son and 5 daughters with their spouses and babies (except one daughter) decide to emigrate to South Australia in 1840. Although the events are true, as are the people and the places, their thoughts and feelings are deduced from 10 years of research in secondary and primary sources. This is history through the reality of one family - it is a bottom-up history rather than the top down history of 'great men'. The usually unspoken lives of the women are shown to have significant impact on the family's decision to emigrate....

Biographie:
Caroline read History at the new University of Kent at Canterbury. She served 7 years retail employment in the fashion business and then developed her family life as the mother of 5 children. She followed voluntary work in youth and sports work with paid development of both Lambeth Independent Sport's Association and Wandsworth Childminders' Association. After this foray into local government support work she joined the education department first as a learning mentor and later as a qualified primary teacher. On the birth of her third grandson she promised him she would write him a story of his Australian forbears in Delia's Journey. She learnt about internet research and followed up genealogical websites and secondary sources in books and libraries. She is now researching a different socio-economic family during the same time period - and looking after her 8th grandson once a week....