A Late Victorian Family Life: The Typically Untypical World of The Collingwoods of Lanehead

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the Collingwood family of Lanehead, Coniston, in the UK’s Lake District. It shows that the family itself was a unity which allowed for the emergence of brilliance on the part of at least one of its members, R. G. Collingwood. It argues that his emergence was the outcome both of his education and of the family habits inculcated into him by his parents and shared with his siblings from an early age and operative throughout their lives. In particular, this included the sharing of detailed and minutely descriptive family letters written as, and designed to be read as, shared narratives. It makes the claim that the family was in many ways a bohemian family, but in its own particular way-its bohemianism being offset by a sturdy work ethic and middle-class sensibility.