The World We Have Lost: Further Explored

Peter Laslett

What was life really like in England before industry, and which of our ideas about the past are myths?

At a glance

You will learn what is true about hunger, marriage and households in the old village, and what is myth
You will see how a society with one class can still be deeply unequal
You will use the past as a mirror, comparing a vanished order with our own to understand ourselves

Book Cover
Title
PREFACE TO THE REISSUE, 2000
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
ENGLISH SOCIETY BEFORE AND AFTER THE COMING OF INDUSTRY The passing of the patriarchal household: parents and children, masters and servants
A ONE-CLASS SOCIETY Social divisions and power relations amongst nobility, gentry, townsmen and peasants
THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY The scale of life in cottage, farmstead, manor house and church
MISBELIEFS ABOUT OUR ANCESTORS The absence of child marriage and extended family households from the English past
BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS The recovery of the English population record since the close of the Middle Ages
DID THE PEASANTS REALLY STARVE? Famine and pestilence amongst English people in the pre-industrial past
PERSONAL DISCIPLINE AND SOCIAL SURVIVAL With notes on the history of bastardy and of sexual nonconformism in England
SOCIAL CHANGE AND REVOLUTION IN THE TRADITIONAL WORLD With an attempt to expunge the phrase 'the English Revolution'
THE PATTERN OF AUTHORITY AND OUR POLITICAL HERITAGE Social deference, political obedience and the county community of gentry
THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION AND THE RULE OF AN LITE Literacy and social mobility in the traditional social structure
AFTER THE TRANSFORMATION English society in the early twentieth century
UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES IN TIME
GENERAL NOTE Files of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
NOTES TO THE TEXT