Bücher der Reihe Oxford Studies in Social History

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.