Mother Is a Verb

“The last couple of years have been marked by an explosion of writing about motherhood in memoir and fiction. The early moments recorded by Knott can be found in Jessie Greengrass, in Rivka Galchen; going further back, there’s Maggie Nelson, further still, Rachel Cusk. What Knott adds to this is less her own experience, though it’s beautifully recorded, than the wider perspective that allows her to say with authority that mothering has always been intimately connected with other aspects of our economic and social lives.”—The Guardian

“This lyrical book—one-third memoir, two-thirds history—guides us through centuries of pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care. Sarah Knott stitches her personal story to vignettes from the past and shows us how everyday mothering differed in time and place. With stunning prose, she gives us the sensory shorn of the sentimental. A riveting read.”—Joanne Meyerowitz, Yale University

“In this innovative, grippingly readable history, Sarah Knott has woven a scintillating tapestry of ideas and experiences across time. Mother Is a Verb is a moving and enlightening meditation on the most elemental, yet ceaselessly varied, of all human bonds.”—Faramerz Dabhoiwala, author of The Origins of Sex

“The union of memoir and history comes of age. Sarah Knott weaves an intimate account of becoming a mother into a richly documented history of maternity. This is a book to savor and share with anyone who loves great history writing.”—Barbara Taylor, Professor of Humanities at the University of London and author of Eve and the New Jerusalem and The Last Asylum

“In this beautifully written book, Sarah Knott speaks from the vantage point of a mother and a historian. Full of stories ranging across time, space, and ethnicity, with imagery that touches all our senses, Mother Is a Verbcaptures the physicality and emotions of motherhood so that even those of us who have never experienced it ourselves feel what it is like to get pregnant, give birth, and raise a child.”—Nancy Shoemaker, Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and author of A Strange Likeness

“This fabulous book manages both to re-create what those extraordinary early months of motherhood are like and to make sense of them by placing them in history. Sarah Knott’s diary of motherhood is poetic: she conveys the sense that time has stopped, that only the baby’s reflux matters, the heightened power of smell, the loss of self. The historical anecdotes Knott provides are riveting, and open up new ways of understanding what motherhood can be. This is a new kind of history writing. A truly original, inspiring book.”—Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford and author of Martin Luther

“Knott's novel approach, companionable tone, and sidesteps into memoir of mothering her own babies give the book a sense of freedom; sharing her joy or delirium, she shifts naturally into intimate, poet's prose. Focused, short chapters further accommodate non-scholarly audiences and fellow historians alike. Hers is a deliberate and altogether radical effort in making the unseen sensational, and the mundane anything but.”—Booklist

“An exploration of mothering, a capacious, complex, and creative experience. Historian and mother of two, Knott grounds her illuminating investigation in her own experience of pregnancy . . . A fresh, lively narrative of personal and historical memory.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Historian Knott explores the concept of mothering throughout history in this intricate and complex narrative. Knott views the practices of mothering through the lens of such actions as conceiving, birthing, cleaning, feeding, sleeping, and being interrupted . . . This painstakingly researched work will be of most interest to social historians."—Publishers Weekly