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Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870
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Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870 Paperback - 2000

by Lisa Norling

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From the publisher

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the whaling industry in New England sent hundreds of ships and thousands of men to distant seas on voyages lasting up to five years. In Captain Ahab Had a Wife, Lisa Norling taps a rich vein of sources -- including women's and men's letters and diaries, shipowners' records, Quaker meeting minutes and other church records, newspapers and magazines, censuses, and city directories -- to reconstruct the lives of the "Cape Horn widows" left behind onshore.

Norling begins with the emergence of colonial whalefishery on the island of Nantucket and then follows the industry to mainland New Bedford in the nineteenth century, tracking the parallel shift from a patriarchal world to a more ambiguous Victorian culture of domesticity. Through the sea-wives' compelling and often poignant stories, Norling exposes the painful discrepancies between gender ideals and the reality of maritime life and documents the power of gender to shape both economic development and individual experience.

From the jacket flap

A social history that uncovers the lives of maritime women in New England villages whose men were whalers during the 18th and 19th centuries. Norling draws from a variety of sources--including women's and men's letters and diaries, shipowners' records, church records, newspapers and magazines, censuses, and city directories to uncover the women's often poignant and painful stories.

Details

  • Title Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870
  • Author Lisa Norling
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition 1st
  • Pages 392
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.A.
  • Publication date 2000-10-16
  • Features Bibliography, Index, Maps
  • ISBN 9780807848708 / 0807848700
  • Weight 1.25 lbs (0.57 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.26 x 6.22 x 0.92 in (23.52 x 15.80 x 2.34 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: 19th Century
    • Cultural Region: New England
    • Sex & Gender: Feminine
  • Category History - U.S.
  • Library of Congress subjects Whaling - Massachusetts - New Bedford -, Women - Massachusetts - New Bedford - Social
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 99088026
  • Dewey Decimal Code 338.372

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Citations

  • Choice, 02/01/2001, Page 1140

About the author

Lisa Norling, associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota, is coeditor of Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920.

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Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870

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Captain Ahab Had a Wife : New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870
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Captain Ahab Had a Wife : New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870

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Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870 (Gender and American Culture)

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Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870 (Gender and American Culture)

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Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, [2000]. Paperback. Very Good. 8vo. xiv, [2] , 372, [2] pp. Bound in illustrated wrappers. Black and white illustrations and maps. Includes bibliography and index. Very Good, text clean, but the final page with publisher's list has previous owner's detailed and , admiring description, in black felt tip pen, of submariner and composer of sea shanties Tom Lewis, with various drawings on verso, light rubbing to wrappers.
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