Books in the Oxford Studies in Social History series

What counted as good and bad manners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Anna Bryson explores what is often entertaining evidence for Tudor and Stuart ideas of bodily decency and decorum, table manners and polite conversation, and also shows the crucial importance of the values of 'courtesy' and 'civility' in an aristocratic society.

This fascinating study is the first to investigate the crimes of women living in Germany during the time of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War. Ulinka Rublack uses court records to examine the lives of shrewd cutpurses, quarelling artisan wives, and soldiers' concubines, and explores women's experience of communities and courtship, marriage, the family, and the law.

This path-breaking study explores the varied meanings of manhood in early modern England and their complex, and often contested, relationship with patriarchal principles. Alexandra Shepard shows how, while males were the principal beneficiaries, both men and women opposed and undermined the status quo.

This study examines the impact of the Reformation idea of "civic righteousness" on the position of women in 16th-century Augsburg. The author argues that its development, both as a religious credo and as a social movement, worsened the status of women.

In the century after the Restoration of 1660, English provincial towns experienced a cultural renaissance. In this lively and perceptive history, Peter Borsay examines the most striking features of that revival, both architectural and social, and penetrates the new culture's elegant facade to explore its economic origins and the mixture of social forces that propelled it.

'Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700' explores the rich oral culture of early modern England. It focuses upon dialect speech and proverbial wisdom, "old wives' tales" and children's lore, historical legends and local customs, scurrilous versifying and scandalous rumour-mongering.

A comprehensive analysis of the single record, which details the multifarious medical practitioners in early modern London. It reveals the attitudes and realities in the conflict between the College of Physicians and the practitioners, male and female, whom the College regarded as illicit or irregular.

This title explores how women of the poorer and middling sorts in early modern England sought to make the best of their lives in a society that excluded or marginalized them in almost every sphere. It argues that networks of close friends ('gossips') provided invaluable moral and practical support.

Reconstructs the patterns of recruitment, training and mobility from the social origins and careers of some 500 lawyers in early modern England, while separate chapters explore the participation of barristers in the cultural, religious and political life of Elizabethan and early Stuart England.

This analysis of women's experiences in London presents evidence for their use of legal agencies, the organization of gender relations and lives. Laura Gowing considers what gender difference meant in daily life, examining gender relations in sex, courtship, marriage, conflict and verbal disputes.

The British have had a hand in devising most popular, contemporary sports. Holt examines the values and social assumptions implicit in the British attitudes towards various games and how and why the playing and organization of sports have changed over the last 190 years.

A study of the ideal and practice of hospitality in England between the 15th and 17th centuries. Hospitality was a vital social virtue and one of the foundations of the moral economy and Christian culture. The book is an analysis of beliefs and practices at different social levels.

The first intensive study of an industrial community in early modern England. Whickham, a village built on an underground mountain of coal in the north-east, was arguably Britain's first modern industrial society. The authors explore life in Whickham between 1560 and 1765 to assess the benefits and costs of the complex process of industrialization.

On the Parish? is a study of the experience of poor relief in the rural parishes of early modern England. It explores the relationships of paupers not only to the parish officers who administered the Elizabethan poor laws but also to their kinfolk and neighbours who continued to provide extensive networks of informal support.

How did people view mental health problems in the 18th century, and what do the attitudes of ordinary people to those afflicted tell about the society's values? This is a study of the daily experiences of those suffering mental impairments, and an exploration into the meaning of this for society.

On the Parish? is a study of the experience of poor relief in the rural parishes of early modern England. It explores the relationships of paupers not only to the parish officers who administered the Elizabethan poor laws but also to their kinfolk and neighbours who continued to provide extensive networks of informal support.

Suicide was regarded as a heinous crime in Tudor and Stuart England; it was in practice de-criminalized, tolerated and even sentimentalized in Georgian England. The authors trace the causes of this dramatic change in attitude.

This book provides an account of the rise of social institutions in Georgian Britain: the British clubs and societies, thousands of which had swept the country by 1800. Ranging from freemasonry to bird-fancying, the author considers the reasons for their development, their export to America and the colonies, and examines their long-term impact.

The author examines the effects of religious change on the English "way of death" between 1480 and 1750. He discusses relatively neglected aspects of the subject such as the death-bed, will-making and the last rites, and describes the development of the English funeral sermon after the Middle Ages.