In July, Nagoya University Press published a Japanese translation of Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall’s Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, with Catherine Hall’s new introduction for the third edition.

The translation was of particular importance to Midori Yamaguchi (Daito Bunka University), whose thesis was supervised by Leonore Davidoff and examined by Catherine Hall. After finishing her own monograph, Daughters of the Anglican Clergy, in 2014, Midori was determined to introduce Family Fortunes to a Japanese audience.

The other translators were no less enthusiastic in undertaking this work. Chihiro Umegaki (Aoyama Gakuin Women’s Junior College) is a historian of ideas, whose published work includes a monograph on Mary Wollstonecraft, while Takahiko Hasegawa (Hokkaido University) is a historical theorist who has translated other major western historical works, such as Peter Burke’s What is Cultural History?, Gareth Steadman Jone’s Languages of Class, and Sonya O. Rose’s What is Gender History?

The three translators hope that the Japanese version of Davidoff and  Hall’s classic study will stimulate research in class and gender history for a long time to come.