Página inicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquise No Site
Este site usa cookies para fornecer nossos serviços, melhorar o desempenho, para análises e (se não estiver conectado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing, você reconhece que leu e entendeu nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade . Seu uso do site e dos serviços está sujeito a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados do Google Livros

Clique em uma foto para ir ao Google Livros

Carregando...

Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract (2020)

de Richard Atkinson

MembrosResenhasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
2211,011,415 (4)3
'Rarely has family history been so vivid' JENNY UGLOW 'An extraordinarily original work' AMANDA FOREMAN Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded - the age at which his father died - when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard. This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica. Richard's searches led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a brilliant but flawed West India merchant who had shipped all the British army's supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. 'Rum' Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage; forty years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy. Drawing on his family's personal correspondence, Richard writes with rare candour about his worldly ancestors and their involvement in the slave trade - for, like many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinsons' wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the lives of enslaved Africans. When the first of the Atkinsons sailed to Jamaica in the 1780s, the island was the jewel in the imperial crown; by the 1850s, when the last of them returned, it was an impoverished backwater. This vivid tale of a single family, their lives and loves, set against a panoramic backdrop of war, politics and slavery, offers a uniquely intimate insight into one of the most disturbing chapters in Britain's colonial past.… (mais)
Nenhum(a)
Carregando...

Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Veja também 3 menções

A long, detailed research of the author's forebears, starting in the 18th century and encompassing the lucrative triangular slave trade. En route the author reveals much interesting social history. ( )
  edwardsgt | Jan 27, 2024 |
Richard "Rum" Atkinson was an 18th-century adventurer of the kind you might find in a picaresque novel. The youngest son in a line of Westmorland tanners, he became a merchant and profiteer, a director of the East India Company, an MP, an Alderman of the City of London, a disappointed lover, a slave owner, and the posthumous initiator of the most almighty family feud. He is also the five-times great-uncle of the Richard Atkinson who produced this fascinating, exhaustive work of family history. Mr Atkinson's Rum Contract is the story of a morally tangled inheritance, but it is also the story of Richard Atkinson the younger's obsessive pursuit of Richard Atkinson the elder.

"Genealogy is addictive," Atkinson admits, "and I was soon hooked." ... This is an epic tale, but it is moreover an epic piece of research. If the narrative flavour is caught in the author's zeal, its texture comes from Atkinson's reckoning with the fact that the ancestor he has grown to love is someone he does not know at all. The book's appearance during our hiatus could not be better: my guess is that many readers will now find themselves inspired to unlock their own time capsules and slip into another century.
adicionado por Cynfelyn | editarThe Guardian, Frances Wilson (Jun 4, 2020)
 
Você deve entrar para editar os dados de Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Compartilhado.
Título canônico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Lugares importantes
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
Eventos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Últimas palavras
Aviso de desambiguação
Editores da Publicação
Autores Resenhistas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Idioma original
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês. Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
CDD/MDS canônico
LCC Canônico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês

Nenhum(a)

'Rarely has family history been so vivid' JENNY UGLOW 'An extraordinarily original work' AMANDA FOREMAN Richard Atkinson was in his late thirties, and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded - the age at which his father died - when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard. This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estates in Jamaica. Richard's searches led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a brilliant but flawed West India merchant who had shipped all the British army's supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. 'Rum' Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage; forty years of litigation followed as his heirs wrangled over his legacy. Drawing on his family's personal correspondence, Richard writes with rare candour about his worldly ancestors and their involvement in the slave trade - for, like many well-to-do Georgian families, the Atkinsons' wealth was acquired at a terrible cost, through the lives of enslaved Africans. When the first of the Atkinsons sailed to Jamaica in the 1780s, the island was the jewel in the imperial crown; by the 1850s, when the last of them returned, it was an impoverished backwater. This vivid tale of a single family, their lives and loves, set against a panoramic backdrop of war, politics and slavery, offers a uniquely intimate insight into one of the most disturbing chapters in Britain's colonial past.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo em haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Links rápidos

Avaliação

Média: (4)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4 2
4.5
5

É você?

Torne-se um autor do LibraryThing.

 

Sobre | Contato | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blog | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Históricas | Os primeiros revisores | Conhecimento Comum | 203,187,957 livros! | Barra superior: Sempre visível