Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c.1200-1520 / Edition 1

by Christopher Dyer

Overview

Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals—wars, pestilence, and rebellion. This book looks at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners, and paupers, and examines how they obtained and spent their incomes. Did the aristocracy practice conspicuous consumption? Did the peasants really starve? The book focuses on the varying fortunes of different social groups in the inflation of the thirteenth century, the crises of the fourteenth, and the apparent depression of the fifteenth. Dr. Dyer explains the changes in terms of the dynamics of a social and economic system subjected to stimuli and stresses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521272155
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/09/1989
Series:	Cambridge Medieval Textbooks
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.94(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Weights, measures and places; Introduction; 1. Late medieval society; 2. Aristocratic incomes; 3. The aristocracy as consumers; 4. Aristocratic expenditure: making ends meet; 5. Peasant living standards: modelling the peasant economy; 6. Peasants as consumers; 7. Urban standard of living; 8. The wage-earners; 9. Poverty and charity; 10. The weather and standards of living; Conclusion; Medieval living standards - postscript; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"To construct so well balanced and lucidly written a textbook on so large and neglected a theme can have been no easy matter, and Dyer is to be congratulated on producing what now serves as the ideal introduction to late medieval English society." R. B. Dobson, Studies in the Age of Chaucer

"...an admirable synthesis of the best work done in both social and economic history over the past generation." Canadian Journal of History

"Christopher Dyer has written a cogent textbook that provides an excellent survey of standards of living in the later middle ages." James M. Rosenheim, Albion

From the Publisher