Popular Culture In England, C. 1500-1850 (themes In Focus)

Annotation As scholarly interest in popular culture has grown, more and more British and American universities have been introducing courses in popular culture, now seen as an essential aspect of historical investigation. This volume answers the need for a book focusing on England (unlike Peter Burke's Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978), and over a broad time period (unlike Barry Reay's Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (1985)), which will fulfil it's aim of appealing both to specialists and students coming new to the subject. Tim Harris has assembled a very strong team of contributors who will ensure a very lively and interesting collection of essays Front Matter....Pages i-xi Problematising Popular Culture....Pages 1-27 Regional Cultures? Local Variations in Popular Culture during the Early Modern Period....Pages 28-47 The Gendering of Popular Culture in Early Modern England....Pages 48-68 Literacy and Literature in Popular Culture: Reading and Writing in Historical Perspective....Pages 69-94 From Reformation to Toleration: Popular Religious Cultures in England, 1540–1690....Pages 95-123 The People’s Health in Georgian England....Pages 124-142 Women, Work and Cultural Change in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century London....Pages 143-167 Against Innovation? Custom and Resistance in the Workplace, 1700–1850....Pages 168-188 ‘Tacit, Unsuspected, but still Implicit Faith’: Alternative Belief in Nineteenth-Century Rural England....Pages 189-215 Back Matter....Pages 216-293 A collection of nine essays which offer a critical re-evaluation of the concept of "popular culture" which covers a range of topics from religion to gender. The book challenges the traditional interpretation that the period c.1500-1850 saw a gulf between elite and popular culture. This volume answers the need for a book focusing on popular culture in England over a broad time period aimed at both specialists and students coming new to the subject