Helen and her book A Victorian’s Inheritance appear in the Who Do You Think You Are? September 2021
Who Do i think you were?® A Victorian’s Inheritance
Anxiety. Addiction. Depression. We often think of these experiences as distinctly modern, yet their roots often stretch back to previous generations. In A Victorian’s Inheritance, Helen Parker-Drabble sheds light on how such conditions may have shaped different branches of our family.
Using her Victorian grandfather’s life as an example, Helen Parker-Drabble constructs a vivid portrait of daily life for her working-class ancestors. But she goes beyond recreating the past by drawing on theories of psychology, epigenetics and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. What psychological inheritance did her grandfather Walter receive from his parents and their forebears?
Blending social, local and family history with insights from modern science, Helen Parker-Drabble offers genealogists and family historians an innovative lens through which to view our ancestry. Her work invites us to reflect not only on the lives of those who came before us, but on our families’ psychological inheritance and the legacies that are passed on.
For reviews, information and the opportunity to read the first two chapters of ‘Who Do I Think You Were?’ A Victorian’s Inheritance scroll to the bottom of the page and subscribe.