CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 The first social and cultural history of vagrancy between 1650 and 1750, this book combines sources from across England and the Atlantic world to describe the shifting and desperate experiences of the very poorest and most marginalized of people in early modernity; the outcasts, the wandering destitute, the disabled veteran, the aged labourer, the solitary pregnant woman on the road and those referred to as vagabonds and beggars are all explored in this comprehensive account of the subject. Using a rich array of archival and literary sources, Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750 offers a history not only of the experiences of vagrants themselves, but also of how the settled 'better sort' perceived vagrancy, how it was culturally represented in both popular and elite literature as a shadowy underworld of dissembling rogues, gypsies, and pedlars, and how these representations powerfully affected the lives of vagrants themselves. Hitchcock's is an important study for all scholars and students interested in the social and cultural history of early modern England.

The twenty-five year period following the Second World War saw an enormous expansion of activity in the writing of the history of modern Britain, and with that expansion a major transformation of the state of knowledge in many parts of the area. First published in 1970, this Revivals reissue, which includes an extensive coverage of books and a reasonable selection of articles, endeavours both to survey the work done and to reduce it to some comprehensible order. It indicates achievements and probable lines of development, and collects the materials that have grown around the main controversies. Omitted are local history (in the main) and the history of empire and commonwealth, except where the latter really arises out of the affairs of the mother country. There are special sections on social history, the history of ideas, Scotland and Ireland.