Edward P. Thompson

Homage to Tom Maguire

As the writing of labour history becomes more professionalised, so the centre of interest shifts from front-line engagements to the disputes and strategical plans of G.H.Q. In the Colindale Library, the Public Record Office, the national archives of trade unions, the Place or Webb Collections, the techniques proper to a constitutional or economic historian can be employed. The dubious reminiscences of local worthies can be disregarded (unless required for ‘colour’), the regional skirmishes can be dismissed with an irritable footnote, and the historian can get down in earnest to national minute-books, Congress proceedings, intrigues among the leadership, and underhand political agreements.

Customs in Common.

Introduction - custom and culture the patricians and the plebs custom, law and common right the moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century the moral economy reviewed time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism the sales of wives rough music.

The END of the line

The Bulletin invited Professor Thompson to comment on a few of the many books on nuclear holocaust. In this article the author does so, and then moves on to a comprehensive and challenging assessment of the nuclear menace in Europe.

Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800.

Introduction Jack Goody 1. Inheritance, property and women: some comparative considerations Jack Goody 2. Family structures and inheritance customs in sixteenth century France Emmanuel Le Roy Laudrie 3. Inheritance, land tenure and peasant family structure: a German regional comparison Lutz K. Berkner 4. Aspects of kinship behaviours and property in rural Western Europe before 1800 David Sabean 5. Peasant inheritance customs in the Midlands, 1280-1700 Cicley Howell 6. Peasant inheritance customs and land distribution in Cambridgeshire from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries Margaret Spufford 7. The European debate on customs of inheritance, 1500-1700 Jan Thirsk 8. Patterns of inheritance and settlement by great landowners from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries J. P. Cooper 9. The grid of inheritance: a comment E. P. Thompson 10. Private property in history V. G. Kieran Glossary Index.

Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800

Introduction Jack Goody 1. Inheritance, property and women: some comparative considerations Jack Goody 2. Family structures and inheritance customs in sixteenth century France Emmanuel Le Roy Laudrie 3. Inheritance, land tenure and peasant family structure: a German regional comparison Lutz K. Berkner 4. Aspects of kinship behaviours and property in rural Western Europe before 1800 David Sabean 5. Peasant inheritance customs in the Midlands, 1280-1700 Cicley Howell 6. Peasant inheritance customs and land distribution in Cambridgeshire from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries Margaret Spufford 7. The European debate on customs of inheritance, 1500-1700 Jan Thirsk 8. Patterns of inheritance and settlement by great landowners from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries J. P. Cooper 9. The grid of inheritance: a comment E. P. Thompson 10. Private property in history V. G. Kieran Glossary Index.

Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England@@@Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act

In the popular imagination, informed as it is by Hogarth, Swift, Defoe and Fielding, the eighteenth-century underworld is a place of bawdy knockabout, rife with colourful eccentrics. But the artistic portrayals we have only hint at the dark reality. In this new edition of a classic collection of essays, renowned social historians from Britain and America examine the gangs of criminals who tore apart English society, while a criminal law of unexampled savagery struggled to maintain stability. Douglas Hay deals with the legal system that maintained the propertied classes, and in another essay shows it in brutal action against poachers; John G. Rule and Cal Winslow tell of smugglers and wreckers, showing how these activities formed a natural part of the life of traditional communities. Together with Peter Linebaughs piece on the riots against the surgeons at Tyburn, and E. P. Thompsons illuminating work on anonymous threatening letters, these essays form a powerful contribution to the study of social tensions at a transformative and vibrant stage in English history. This new edition includes a new introduction by Winslow, Hay and Linebaugh, reflecting on the turning point in the social history of crime that the book represents.