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  3. Past and Present Publications

Past and Present Publications comprise books similar in character to the articles in the journal Past and Present. Whether the volumes in the series are collections of essays - some previously published, others new studies - or monographs, they encompass a wide variety of scholarly and original works primarily concerned with social, economic and cultural changes, and their causes and consequences. They will appeal to both specialists and non-specialists and communicate the results of historical and allied research in readable and lively form.

  • General Editors: Lyndal Roper, University of Oxford, Christopher Wickham, University of Oxford

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25 results in Past and Present Publications

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Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640
  • Edited by Martin Ingram
  • Published online:
    24 September 2009
    Print publication:
    31 March 1988
  • Adultery, fornication, breach of marriage contract, sexual slander - these, along with religious offences of various kinds, were typical of the cases dealt with by the ecclesiastical courts in Elizabethan and early Stuart England. What was it like to live in a society in which personal morality was regulated by law in this fashion? How far-reaching was such surveillance in actual practice? How did ordinary people view the courts - as useful institutions upholding accepted standards, or as an alien system purveying unwanted values? How effective were the church courts in influencing attitudes and behaviour? Previous assessments of ecclesiastical justice, coloured by contemporary puritan and common law criticisms, have mostly been unfavourable. This in-depth, richly documented study of the sex and marriage business dealt with under church law, based on the records of the courts in Wiltshire, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire and West Sussex in the period 1570–1640, presents a more balanced and more positive view.

Fair Shares for All
  • Jacobin Egalitarianism in Practice
  • Jean-Pierre Gross
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    05 December 1996
  • This study explores the egalitarian policies pursued in the provinces during the radical phase of the French Revolution, but moves away from the habit of looking at such issues in terms of the Terror alone. It challenges revisionist readings of Jacobinism that dwell on its totalitarian potential or portray it as dangerously utopian. The mainstream Jacobin agenda emphasised 'fair shares' and equal opportunities for all in a private ownership market economy. It sought to achieve social justice without jeopardising human rights and tended thus to complement, rather than undermine, the liberal, individualist programme of the Revolution. The book stresses the relevance of the 'Enlightenment legacy', the close affinity between Girondins and Montagnards, the key role played by many lesser-known figures and the moral ascendancy of Robespierre. It reassesses the basic social and economic issues at stake in the Revolution, which cannot be understood solely in terms of political discourse.

Crime and Law in England, 1750–1840
  • Remaking Justice from the Margins
  • Peter King
  • Published online:
    25 July 2009
    Print publication:
    07 December 2006
  • How was law made in England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Through detailed studies of what the courts actually did, Peter King argues that parliament and the Westminster courts played a less important role in the process of law making than is usually assumed. Justice was often remade from the margins by magistrates, judges and others at the local level. His book also focuses on four specific themes - gender, youth, violent crime and the attack on customary rights. In doing so it highlights a variety of important changes - the relatively lenient treatment meted out to women by the late eighteenth century, the early development of the juvenile reformatory in England before 1825, i.e. before similar changes on the continent or in America, and the growing intolerance of the courts towards everyday violence. This study is invaluable reading to anyone interested in British political and legal history.

The Peasants of Ottobeuren, 1487–1726
  • A Rural Society in Early Modern Europe
  • Govind P. Sreenivasan
  • Published online:
    21 July 2009
    Print publication:
    07 June 2004
  • The Peasants of Ottobeuren offers an interesting perspective on one of the enduring problems of early modern European history: the possibilities for economic growth and social change in rural society. Based on the voluminous records of the Swabian Benedictine monastery of Ottobeuren, this study underscores the limitations of the traditional narrative of a sixteenth-century boom which foundered on the productive rigidities of the peasant economy and then degenerated into social crisis in the seventeenth century. Population growth did strain resources at Ottobeuren, but the peasantry continued to produce substantial agricultural surplus. More importantly, peasants reacted to demographic pressure by deepening their involvement in land and credit markets, and more widely and aggressively marketing the fruits of their labour. Marriage and inheritance underwent a similar process of commercialization which made heavy demands on the peasantry, but which maintained a degree of social stability through the devastations of war, plague and famine.

Fashioning Adultery
  • Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660–1740
  • David M. Turner
  • Published online:
    01 July 2009
    Print publication:
    15 August 2002
  • This 2002 book provides a major survey of representations of adultery in later seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. Bringing together a wide variety of literary and legal sources - including sermons, pamphlets, plays, diaries, periodicals, trial reports and the records of marital litigation - it documents a growing diversity in perceptions of marital infidelity in this period, against the backdrop of an explosion in print culture and a decline in the judicial regulation of sexual immorality. In general terms the book charts and explains a gradual transformation of ideas about extra-marital sex, whereby the powerfully established religious argument that adultery was universally a sin became increasingly open to challenge. The book charts significant developments in the idiom in which sexually transgressive behaviour was discussed, showing how evolving ideas of civility and social refinement and new thinking about gender difference influenced assessments of immoral behaviour.

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