The World We Have Lost

"Peter Lasletts greatest gift as his best-known book, The World We Have Lost, suggests, was more for evocation than analysis: to bring back to life, in all their confusion, ingenuity and suffering, the human beings who have long gone. - John Dunn, The Independent "The outcome of years of researchtransformed our knowledge of the English familyLaslett showed how life in pre-industrial society was no idyll." - The Telegraph "Peter Lasletts greatest gift as his best-known book, The World We Have Lost, suggests, was more for evocation than analysis: to bring back to life, in all their confusion, ingenuity and suffering, the human beings who have long gone." - John Dunn, The Independent "The outcome of years of researchtransformed our knowledge of the English familyLaslett showed how life in pre-industrial society was no idyll." - The Telegraph

Peter Laslett (19152001) was a Life Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. A leading historian of his generation, he was one of the founders of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. A passionate advocate for using radio and television to help history reach a wider audience, he worked as a BBC radio producer and ran a series of programmes on Anglia Television, the 'Dawn University'. With the sociologist Michael Young he also helped establish the Open University in 1969.

Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Kevin Schrer Introduction 1. English society before and after the coming of industry 2. A one-class society 3. The village community 4. Misbeliefs about our ancestors 5. Births, marriages and deaths 6. Did the peasants really starve? 7. Personal discipline and social survival 8. Social change and revolution in the traditional world 9. The pattern of authority and our political heritage 10. The politics of exclusion and the rule of an lite 11. After the transformation 12. Understanding ourselves in time General Note List of Authorities Index