History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600 to 1800

Elizabeth Foyster is Senior College Lecturer and Fellow in History at Clare College, University of Cambridge Christopher A. Whatley OBE, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Dundee. He is the author of the award-winning The Scots and the Union (EUP, 2006 and 2014), and co-edited Edinburgh University Press’s History of Everyday Life in Scotland series. Long interested in Dundee’s history he has co-edited and written several books on the city.Christopher A. Whatley OBE, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Dundee. He is the author of the award-winning The Scots and the Union (EUP, 2006 and 2014), and co-edited Edinburgh University Press’s History of Everyday Life in Scotland series. Long interested in Dundee’s history he has co-edited and written several books on the city.

The essays will be of interest to both casual and expert readers, and taken together they add up to an impressive and stimulating snapshot of early-modern Scottish society. Moreover, the reading experience is enhanced by the high quality of the production, the wide range of engaging and unusual illustrations, and the provision for each chapter of briefbut useful guides to further reading... There can be no doubt about the importance of this publication. It offers a stimulating and authoritative overview of Scottish social history in the early-modern period, written by a group of historians whose expertise and formidable familiarity with the sources are obvious. As a synthesis of past and current research it provides a resource that will be especially cherished by historians and students. But equally importantly, its determination to look beyond the obvious, to interrogate the sources in innovative and imaginative ways, and to give a voice to the almost silent masses of history, is a welcome reminder of the richness of the historian’s craft, not to mention a stirring battle-cry to expand horizons ever further.

• Foreword; Introduction; Chapter 1: Everyday Structures, Rhythms and Spaces of the Scottish Countryside, Robert A. Dodgshon; Chapter 2: Improvement and Modernisation in Everyday Enlightenment Scotland, Charles McKean; Chapter 3: Death, Birth and Marriage, Deborah A. Symonds; Chapter 4: Illness, Disease and Pain, Helen M. Dingwall; Chapter 5: Necessities: Food and Clothing in the Long Eighteenth Century, Stana Nenadic; Chapter 6: Communicating, Bob Harris; Chapter 7: Order and Disorder, Christopher A. Whatley; Chapter 8: Sensory Experiences: Smells, Sounds and Touch, Elizabeth Foyster; Chapter 9: Beliefs, Religions, Fears and Neuroses, Joyce Miller; Chapter 10: Movement, Transport and Travel, Alastair Durie; Chapter 11: Work, Time and Pastimes, Christopher A. Whatley.