Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London

Katherine L. French is J. Frederick Hoffman Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese and The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion After the Black Death, both published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

"[W]as the plague the end of something, or the beginning? Was it the devastating calamity that ended two centuries of population growth and economic expansion in England, or the foundation of a new 'golden age' in the long 15th century (c.1380-1520) for workers, who leveraged their labour power into higher wages, a better quality of life and a mountain of consumer goods? Katherine French provides a new angle on these questions by considering domestic life and material culture in London...French's evidence takes us into the emotional world of late medieval London, but her materials--all the sentimental wills and cold-eyed inventories--emphasise the pain of accumulation, the vexed moments at which objects are invested with an excessive love." (London Review of Books) "Katherine French's latest book is an important contribution to the history of material culture, viewed from the expert standpoint of a historian steeped in late medieval English life...Changes in volumes and types of goods brought changes in both standards and ways of living, for social change was imbricated with material goods. The evidence presented here is compelling in so many ways: questions of gender, of household management, of personal religion...[O]ne cannot fail to be impressed by this view of the quotidian life of England's capital, and by the skill and depth of knowledge with which French has presented it to us." (Speculum) "Katherine French has written a stimulating book that convincingly uses documentary sources such as inventories and wills not only to retrace where and how people lived in late medieval London but also to reconstruct their lives, their emotions, and their aspirations as they rearranged their lives after the catastrophe of the Plague...French has given us much to consider about how our current crisis may relate to what late medieval people experienced and how these events may have left their traces in the material culture of their homes and bodies." (Early Modern Women) "[A]n immensely evocative and rewarding study of the relationship between people and things in London between 1300 and 1540...One of the many strengths of Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London lies in the manner in which French has brought together the textual evidence with the archaeological and museological record. The work as a whole provides a marvelous introduction to material culture in London before and after the Black Death, and a new framework for writing a history of the complex interactions between people and their material environment." (The Medieval Review) "Household Goods offers a detailed analysis of the inventories, wills and testaments of later medieval London. It is both easy to read and enjoyable. French provides a real insight, not only into how people might experience and understand household goods, but also how these goods affected, and were tied to, people's social relationships and identities." (Urban History) "Household Goods and Good Households is an impressive achievement. Its documentation of the material lives of London citizens, from wealthy merchants to middling craftsmen, across the great divide of the Black Death is revelatory; her argument about cultural change in the face of demographic catastrophe is compelling; and her prose is refreshingly readable." (EH.net) "Katherine L. French offers an original and convincing hypothesis about a distinctive mercantile and artisanal culture that is not merely emulative of elite consumption practices, but rather innovative and adaptive. Throughout, she explores the relationship between gender, 'stuff,' and the lifeways and rituals associated with household work, food, and childbirth. More broadly, she makes a powerful contribution to wider historical and sociological discussions about the relationship between people and their things." (Kate Giles, University of York)