Common People: In Pursuit of My Ancestors

Light (Mrs. Woolf and the Servants), an English writer and critic, promotes the rewards of genealogy as she seeks her roots from Norfolk to Wales to the South Coast. Taking her cue from the BBC celebrity series Who Do You Think You Are?, Light acknowledges that the “Internet produces its own version of ‘archive fever,’ ” and that “people want to know where they came from.” She opens Part One with her father’s death and digs into the mysterious origins of her paternal grandmother, discovering that her grandfather, who came from a long line of bricklayers, had a hand in building the pubs of Portsmouth. Part Two focuses on Light’s mother’s background, with her maternal grandmother supplying the “foundation” of her family. Light’s maternal grandmother, likely an illegitimate child and dropped off at a Portsmouth workhouse at age 10, became a matriarch and looming familial presence. Ancestors from both sides spent much time in workhouses, a Victorian institution that provided material for Charles Dickens and became, by default, Light’s “ancestral home.” As the self-appointed family detective, she ends up compiling eight intertwined family trees that date back to 1640. While someone else’s family history may mean “more to the teller than the listener,” there is ample Victorian history to engage the keen Anglophile. 31 halftones. [em](Oct.) [/em]