Book search

[buddha]

Could anyone recommend or know of a book about the lives of the ordinary peple in the 16th and 17th centuries?
It is very nice to find ancestors but it would be nice to be able to get a feeling for their everyday lives.  Thanks Pat           COMPLETED WITH THANKS

[MKG]

Ordinary people in any period of history are notoriously hard to find! Rollicking stories of the Tudors and the foreign policy of the Stuarts, yes, but ordinary people?

Your best bet would be to use the net as much as possible to find out about the social conditions at those times (religious upheaval, civil war, Tudor building practices, the return of the plague etc.) and you may find some references to books around there - but ordinary people have never been the favourite subject of historians. And, of course, a lot depends upon whether you're looking for people in towns or in the country. If it's the latter, nothing had really changed since the fourteenth century - so if you look for books on medieval history, you won't be far out.

Should you find any book at all about ordinary people, please let me know 

Mike

[Gadget]

Hi

There might be something listed in one of the links here:

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,163836.0.html

I seem to recall coming across a few refs while I was doing a list.


Gadget

[Lydart]

Pepys diary ??



added:-    I've recently read 'The Journal of Mrs Pepys' which is a very well researched novel ... her details of servants and shopping give a lot of detail about London life before and after the Plague and Great Fire.



The Paston Letters cover a century earlier ... but also a good read ! 

[buddha]

Hi all, Thanks for replies.  Have just been on the link from Gadget and it looks very interesting but thought I ought to answer you so will get back to it. I have actually got the book The Diary Of Samuel Pepys somewhere.  Had forgotten I,d got it, so must hunt it out.  Who wrote the Paston letters?    Any more suggestions welcome.  Cheers Pat           

[Gadget]

Paston Letters here:

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/paston.htm


Most of my books are in Scotland - I'll look them up in a week's time when I'm there. 


Gadget

[buddha]

Thanks Gadget, Regards Pat

[behindthefrogs]

The diary of Samuel Pepys, the full version offers some very interesting insights into life at that time.  It can be found in most libraries and runs from between four and twelve volumes depending on which printing they hold.

You need to dip into the full version as the shortened versions leave out the bawdy bits and tend to give cleaned up interpretation.

Incidently if you have ancestors who lived in London at that time it is worth checking the index to the diary remembering that names may well have been spelt differently.  For example our Edlin ancestor who I found a number of times in the diary was referred to as Mr Eglin.

David

[jorose]

Try http://www.archive.org/
e.g. if you search for "Labourer" there are quite a few books of interest.

The annals of toil: being labour-history outlines, Roman and British.

looks quite interesting.