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Legal and Familial Recordkeeping: Chancery Court Records and Charlotte Smith's The Old Manor House
Author(s) -
Nixon Cheryl
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2005.00155.x
Subject(s) - misrepresentation , law , ledger , legal history , romance , ideal (ethics) , history , order (exchange) , period (music) , sociology , literature , political science , art , finance , economics , aesthetics
Emphasizing the Romantic period's new legal recordkeeping practices, this essay traces Charlotte Smith's reliance on and critique of legal records in The Old Manor House (1793). Smith's novel connects legal structure to family structure, depicting a family misshapen by legal misrepresentation. In order to understand Smith's use of legal records, this essay focuses on the family “account” and examines late eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century legal commentaries, treatises, and case reports. Extending this exploration to the manuscript legal record, this essay also uncovers account journals and ledgers held in the Chancery Court archives. As these materials reveal, both Smith and the law are united in imagining an ideal left unachieved: both seek an organized record of the family, as such a record offers the promise of organizing the family itself