Enclosure—the conversion of peasants' commonly held lands to privately owned pasture—has long been considered a critical stage in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. This book is the first, however, to treat in detail the literary and cultural implications of enclosure in early modern England. Bringing together the work of both senior and younger scholars who represent a wide range of critical orientations, Enclosure Acts focuses not only on the historical fact of land enclosure, but also on the symbolic containment of sexuality in Elizabethan and Jacobean literary works. The first type of enclosure frequently has been treated by materialists and new historicists; feminists and theorists concerned with issues of gender have tended to concentrate on the second. The fourteen essays collected here explore the relationships between these two ways of perceiving enclosure in the context of cultural studies. Individual chapters examine the creation of territorial and social boundaries as well as the consequences of enclosure acts.

This collection of essays, by theorists and scholars representing a wide range of critical orientations, focuses not only on land enclosure as a historical fact, but also on the symbolic containment of sexuality in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature.

The abolition of the Scottish and Irish Parliaments in 1707 and 1800 created a United Kingdom centred upon the Westminster legislature. This text discusses what this meant for the four nations involved, and how conceptions of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities were affected.

This book offers the first comprehensive study of the enclosure mapping of England and Wales. Enclosure maps are fundamental sources of evidence in many types of historical inquiries. Although modern historians tend to view these large-scale maps essentially as sources of data on past economies and societies, this book argues that enclosure maps had a much more active role at the time they were compiled. Seen from this perspective of their contemporary society, enclosure maps are not simply antiquarian curiosities, cultural artefacts, or useful sources for historians but instruments of land reorganisation and control which both reflected and consolidated the power of those who commissioned them. The book is accompanied by a fully searchable, descriptive and analytical web catalogue of all parliamentary and non-parliamentary enclosure maps extant in public archives and libraries and offers an essential research tool for economic, social and local historians and for geographers, lawyers and planners.

Material from The Agrarian History of England and Wales, in paperback with new introductions.