From the title, and the chapter titles, this looked totally arcane and pointless as an idea for a book, but it actually draws on a lot of interesting first-person historical documents, starting out with an account of King Louis XIII's (a long-awaited male heir) birth in 1601. Here's midwife Louise Bourgeois speaking (her 1617 "How and When the Queen Gave Birth" was itself newly translated in 2000):
He asked me at every hour if the queen would soon give birth and what the infant would be. To quiet him, I said yes. He asked me again what the baby would be. I told him that it would be whatever I would like. "What," he asked, "isn't it made?" I said yes, that it was a baby, but that I could make it a boy or a girl, whichever pleased me. He said, "midwife, since it depends on you, put there the pieces of a boy."
Chapters:
1. Lurking in the Gossip's Bowl: Men's Tales and Women's Words
2. "Sometimes the Midwives break it": Pressing Maids and Making Women
3. "As God makes, so the Midwife shapes": Crowning Heads and Reforming English Bodies
4. Stealing the Seal: Baptizing Women and the Mark of Kingshep
5. "(Miraculous) Matter": Lucina at Ephesus and the Churching of Women
Epilogue: Lucina in London
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