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Despite a certain academic heaviness, with no fewer than fifty-seven pages of notes, bibliography and index, and despite an occasionally disagreeable academic vocabulary, of which more anon, this book has a pleasantly simple knock-down argument, that Christianity in Britain enjoyed a long nineteenth century of prosperity, between 1800 and 1960, and only began to go into terminal decline in the
Figures in the Landscape brings together fifteen pieces of research by Margaret Spufford stretching across her distinguished career from 1962 to the present day.(1) As such, it reflects her broad range of interests, in the use of primary sources - particularly probate and taxation documents; the history of village communities; and popular consumption, literacy
This book seems to have been a long time coming. Its precursors were a slim volume in the popular Macmillan Studies in Economic and Social History series in 1992, and more recently the Atlas of Victorian Mortality (with Nicola Shelton), published in 1997.
This volume seeks to display mid-nineteenth century views on modernity as well as to investigate aspects of modernisation in Victorian London. Observers then and now could not and cannot help but note the piecemeal re-development of London in this period, compared, for instance, with Paris.
It would seem that this weighty collection is part of an even larger project. Much of the preparatory work was carried out by Peter Kitson and his colleagues in the recent Romanticism and Colonialism.
Daily Life in Georgian England as Reported in the Gentleman's Magazine / Emily Lorraine de Montluzin
Samuel Johnson once remarked that Edward Cave, founder and first editor of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1731, 'never looked out of the window but with a view to the Gentleman's Magazine.' (1) This view encompassed the diversity of Georgian life, politics and culture.
Several decades ago, during my teenage years in the 1970s, I attended a grammar school near Reigate in Surrey. Every weekday morning for seven years, I would take an early train from Horley to Redhill, before walking or catching a bus from there to the school.
Professor Orme's new and lavishly illustrated work on medieval children presents the lives and activities of children in England from the Anglo-Saxon to the late Medieval periods. Although many aspects of childhood in the medieval period have been covered by other writers, Professor Orme is the first historian to attempt to discuss the topic from before the Norman Conquest to the 16th century.
Modern historians, and particularly biographers, soon become aware of the importance to their research of the private papers of leading politicians. They hope that such archives will add a human dimension to their studies, the opportunity to get to the private individual behind the public figure.
The relationship between slavery, colonialism, capital accumulation and economic development has long been an issue that has exercised political economists and economic historians, though it is perhaps fair to say that it tends to be neglected in standard university courses for undergraduates.