Living with the dead : memories, histories, and the stories families tell in modern Britain / Laura King.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

King, Laura, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Families--Great Britain.

Families.

Collective memory--Great Britain.

Collective memory.

Dead--Social aspects--Great Britain.

Dead.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"The dead are everywhere in family life. From a great-grandmother’s recipe made time and again, to a dog-eared black-and-white photo of a family on a beach, and from a carefully curated family bible to a much-told story of a family fleeing their home many decades ago, families are made by their pasts. This book examines the relationship between the living and the dead within family life, charting the way families create afterlives for their ancestors. It asks who and what gets to be remembered, and why. Considering different points of connection with the dead in each chapter—through graves, homes, things, photos, writing, research, and stories—this book shows how death and the dead remain a crucial presence within family life. Through an innovative methodology of collaborative critical family history, Living with the Dead features interviews, personal archives, and the results of a collaboration with fifteen family historians, including the author’s own family. What results is a unique way of getting inside families in the past, of charting not only how families have remembered their dead and passed on their histories over time, but the mechanisms of how histories are constructed and shared. Living with the Dead reveals how crucial the dead and stories of them are within families, and provides new ways for historians to unpick the way history is intimately made"-- Oxford Academic.

Through an innovative methodology of collaborative critical family history, this book examines the relationship between the living and the dead within family life, charting the way families create afterlives for their ancestors. It asks who and what gets to be remembered, and why.

Contents:

The living and the dead

Graves

Homes

Things

Photos

Writing

Researching

Stories

An ending.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed November 25, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: King, Laura. Living with the dead

ISBN:

9780191915697

0191915696

9780192647757

019264775X

9780192647764

0192647768

OCLC:

1479277609

Publisher Number:

CIPO000176408

Access Restriction:

Some versions: Open access versions available from some providers open access