The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950

Description

The intensive study of particular localities and communities characterizes much recent work in social history. Volume One draws on this approach to present a series of chapters on the social history of various regions of the British Isles. Two introductory chapters on the countryside and on the city balance the geographical specificity of the other chapters, showing how the social cohesion of regional communities is strongly influenced by regional economies. Regions and Communities offers important new perspectives on the links between economic and social history and the interaction of economy and society.

'Social history is at last ceasing to be the Cinderella of scholarship, and these fine volumes will do much to help raise it to its rightful place in the palace of academe. Uniformly lucid and erudite, Professor Thompson's crew of some two dozen leading historians together present a coherent succession of first-rate thematic syntheses of the latest research. The balance is right. For the student, there is sufficient density of detail to render this ... an admirable basic text; while bold revisionism and scholarly joisting give real intellectual distinction to the enterprise.' Roy Porter, New Statesman and Society 'These unique, comprehensive, collaborative volumes offer compelling evidence of the richness and vitality of British social history some three decades after its emergence in the later 1950s and early 1960s ... certain to become standard reference works charting the course of scholarship at a particular point in time.' Richard A. Soloway, Social Science Quarterly