Description
The period between 1500 and 1700 marked a major transition in the historical development of English towns. With the Reformation, many of the characteristic, traditional features of towns were destroyed, and it was not until 1700 that a new urban stability was beginning to emerge from the political and economic crises of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early chapters look in turn at the different kinds of town, including the county towns and new industrial centers, and describe their salient aspects. The approach of the second half of the book is thematic rather than chronological, exploring the changes that affected—and pressures that afflicted—all towns by examination of their demographic and social structures, their economic and political functions, and their cultural influence. In this lucid synthesis of recent research into urban and local history, the authors reconstruct a picture of the quality of life in Tudor and Stuart towns and, in so doing, present an analysis of the historical processes that decisively shaped early modern urban society. A comprehensive bibliography of new work in the field of urban and local history completes the book. This book has been adopted by the Open University as a set text for the A322 Course. Paul Slack is a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Peter Clark is a lecturer in economic and social history at Leicester University. OXFORD PAPERBACKS UNIVERSITY SERIES The aim of the Oxford Paperbacks University Series is to provide authoritative introductions to most of the important branches of the humanities and sciences. The series thus maintains the aims of the Home University Library, which was founded in 1911 and came under the Oxford imprint in 1941; all the enduring books in that series have been produced in OPUS in new editions after careful revision. New books too, like this one, will be added regularly to OPUS, and their authors, like their HUL predecessors, will be experts in their subjects but selected also for their lucidity in presenting their learning to the layman. The present editors of OPUS are Keith Thomas and Professor J. S. Weiner.
