Histories of Adulthood in Britain and the United States

In November 2024 our own Dr Maria Cannon published an edited collection Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z in the Royal Historical Society’s New Historical Perspectives series published by the University of London Press.   Laura Tisdall, Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, was Maria’s co-editor. The collection looks at how ideas of adulthood have changed over the centuries and addresses two central questions: who gets to be an adult, and who decides? The chapters in the collection cover more than 600 years and two continents and are focused around four key themes: adulthood as both burden and benefit; adulthood as a relational category; collective versus individual definitions of adulthood; and adulthood as a static definition.  She has written this blog post for the RHS website, to explain the rationale behind the book and discussing the contents of specific chapters.