Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture

The "meticulously researched, elegantly argued and deeply humane" sequel to the landmark volume of social history, The Making of the English Working Class (The New York Times Book Review).

This remarkable study investigates the gradual disappearance of a range of cultural customs against the backdrop of the great upheavals of the eighteenth century. As villagers were subjected to a legal system increasingly hostile to custom, they tried both to resist and to preserve tradition, becoming, ...