Joan Thirsk Libri

This pioneering book examines different aspects of the inheritance customs in rural Western Europe in the pre-industrial age: for families and whole societies, the roles of lawyers in reducing them to a common system, and the recurring debate on the merits of various inheritance customs in shaping particular kinds of society. At first sight the study of inheritance customs may appear to be a dull affair, concerned with outdated practices of hair-splitting lawyers; certainly, little academic interest has been shown in the subject. Yet inheritance customs are vital means for the reproduction of the social system, by the transmission of property and other rights through the family. Various family structures and social arrangements are linked by different means of inheritance. This book will interest a wide range of historians, students, postgraduates and teachers alike, whether they are concerned with social, economic, demographic or legal history, in the medieval, early modern or modern periods, and whether their interests are directed to England or other countries of Western Europe; it will also be valuable to social anthropologists, sociologists and historians of ideas. A comprehensive glossary of technical terms has been added for the non-specialist

The English Rural Landscape presents fresh, new perspectives on the landscape of England. Experts in agrarian history provide unique insights into different types of landscape, such as fens, marshes, moorlands, forests, and commons. Interspersed are brief chapters that explore the social and landscape history at specific locations across the country. This unique book synthesizes the very latest thinking on the subject and will be an important addition to the library of all local and social historians, both amateurs and professionals.

No one has done more to emphasise the significance of the land in early modern England that Joan Thirsk, whose writings are both an important contribution to its history and point the way for future research. The subjects of this collection include the origin and nature of the common fields, Tudor enclosures, the Commonwealth confiscation of Royalist land and its subsequent return after the Restoration, inheritance customs, and the role of industries in the rural economy, among them stocking knitting.