Neighbourhood and society : a London suburb in the seventeenth century /

In the area of early modern English social history, a new luminary may be found; Boulton's name can be added to those earlier pioneers, such as Peter Laslett, E.A. Wrigley, and Roger Schofield, associated with the ``Cambridge Group.'' Like those before him, Boulton (Cambridge) is equally at home with the tedium of computerized demographics. He also treats competently the human dimension that yields the final question, ``how did pre-industrial man live,'' and its answer. Readers are given a detailed description of living situations in a large neighborhood in the South London area, derived from deeply mined sources. Boulton is able, too, to frame this Southwark suburb against the broader national condition of the times. Each chapter is illuminated by case studies of the neighborhood's dwellers, brilliantly drawn from its records. Finally, Boulton begs no questions, and takes his reader through the depths of current historiography with understanding. Excellent charts and graphs, superb notes, extensive bibliography and index-structurally, a model for similar future works in English social history. College and university libraries.-G.M. Straka, University of Delaware