Society in Early Modern England

"This book aims high and deserves careful reading." BBC History Magazine "Society in Early Modern England is a major work that will command the attention of all scholars and students interested in the period. Dr. Withington reveals time and again that he is an adept thinker and careful reader, as well as a first-rate historian, as eager to struggle with conceptual problems as to analyse complicated source material. This book will force many to rethink their understanding of the early modern period and what it means, as well as the ways in which we imagine and categorise historical periods in general." Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex "Withington offers a broad geneaology of historians' use of the term 'early modern', and finds striking similarities with the ways that early moderns themselves had begun to describe their world. It is a notably fresh, wide-ranging and stimulating argument about the analytic value of the term and the disinctiveness of early modern society." Mike Braddick, University of Sheffield "A rigorous and persuasive charting of key concepts and discourses which not only reformulates the significance of the 'early modern' period but also gives that period a new shape." Keith Wrightson, Yale University