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236 Reviews Parergon 20.1 (2003) a group of pilgrims riding to Canterbury, and to Christine de Pizan’s single-sex groups in Le Livre de la Cité des Dames and her household descriptions. Unlike Chaucer, Hoccleve referred directly to the troubled and dangerous times in which he lived, the HundredYearsWar with France, the turbulent reign of Richard II and his deposition by Henry IV in 1399, and the growth of the Lollard heresy. Regrettably, The Regement of Princes is not included in this volume, but there are pertinent speculum regis passages in the Dialogue, which is included. Ellis comments that, like his contemporary Lydgate, Hoccleve wrote as an apologist for religious orthodoxy and social conservatism, but in his case his personal situation interacted ‘eccentrically’ with his religious and social commentary. If Regement of Princes and other mirror-for-princes material had been included, Ellis might have applied Hoccleve’s individualism to what I suspect is his unique contribution to the speculum regis tradition. As with Christine de Pizan and others, Hoccleve’s advice was practical as well as moralistic in the style of Giles of Rome, and also like them, his advice was in the form not of admonition but an understanding of the dynamics of moral behaviour. But whereas they gave their moral advice within the dynamics of a functioning group, Hoccleve remained the individualist and gave his advice as the dynamics of the individual ruler’s personal morality and competence. Hoccleve’s self-presentation, says Ellis, witnesses to a discovery and representation of the individual in the later Middle Ages, a loner who speaks ‘very directly to our uncertain and privatised age’. Barry Collett Department of History University of Melbourne Jackson, Mark, ed., Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550-2000, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002; hardback; pp. v, 293; 7 b/w illustrations; RRP £47.50; ISBN 0754603180. In this book Mark Jackson has pulled together thirteen rather disparate essays under the general umbrella of ‘infanticide’. In his introductory first chapter he claims that the individual chapters are intended to stand alone as microstudies of infanticide in specific jurisdictions and periods, and also, collectively, to provide ‘a telling commentary on the dynamics and determinants of continuity and change in the history of child murder and concealment from the late Reviews 237 Parergon 20.1 (2003) sixteenth through to the late twentieth century’. The times and places which form the subjects of the essays are wide-ranging: sixteenth-century France, eighteenth-century Germany, nineteenth-century South Africa, and England from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Although the plurality of approaches to the topic gives some insight to the various ways in which infanticide can be considered as an historical phenomenon, it causes a degree of confusion if the essays are read through in order. Moreover, in a number of essays there is the distinct impression that references to the crime of infanticide have been grafted on to an existing study of another, albeit similar, theme. Despite this, various individual essays provide a useful and interesting addition to the literature on this fascinating area of socio-legal history. In their essay ‘Infanticide in early modern England: the Court of Great Sessions at Chester, 1650-1800’ J. R. Dickinson and J. A. Sharpe use their recent research on previously unused records from the Court of Great Sessions in Chester to consider the features of infanticide trials over the period. They chart fluctuating prosecution and conviction rates to explore the central features of trials between 1650 and 1800. Their investigations into the records are at an early stage, but suggest that the profile of the crime in Chester mirrors that generally accepted in the rest of England. They identify a pattern of infanticides: unmarried women, generally from the lower orders and many of them servants, killed their offspring at birth and in isolation. Men were rarely involved, and the sex of the baby was irrelevant. Several essays explore the growing emphasis in England upon the insanity defence in cases of infanticide. Dana Rabin considers the reasons behind the growing tendency in the eighteenth century for juries to acquit unmarried women accused of infanticide. She looks in particular at the...

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