Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe

Andreas Gestrich is Director of the German Historical Institute London, UK.Elizabeth Hurren is Reader in History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University, UK.Steven King is Professor of Medical Humanities at Leicester University, UK.

Assembled by three distinguished historians of poverty this volume consists of an introduction and ten essays, mostly focussing on Britain and Germany (three chapters each) but also including chapters on Ireland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden ... anyone with a research interest in this field will find plenty of food for thought ... there is much of value here, therefore, and the volume's production in reasonably priced paperback format brings it within the ordinary scholar's reach.

• 1. Narratives of poverty and sickness in Europe 1780 to 1938: Sources, methods and experiences Andreas Gestrich, Elizabeth Hurren and Steven King \ 2. Grief, sickness, and emotions in the narratives of the shamefaced poor in late eighteenth century Copenhagen Peter Wessel Hansen \ 3. Labouring on a bed of sickness': The material and rhetorical deployment of ill-health in male pauper letters Alannah Tomkins \ 4. 'I have Once more taken the Liberty to Say as you well know': The development of rhetoric in the letters of the English, Welsh and Scottish sick and poor 1780s-1830s Steven King and Alison Stringer \ 5. Poverty and epidemics: Perceptions of the poor at times of Cholera in Germany and Spain, 1830s-1860s Beate Althammer \ 6. Living with Insanity: Narratives of poverty, pauperism and sickness in asylum records 1840-1876 Cathy Smith \ 7. Narratives of poverty in Irish suicides between the Great Famine and the First World War, 1845-1914 Georgina Laragy \ 8. Stories of care and coercion: Narratives of poverty and suffering among patients with venereal disease in Sweden 1860-1920 Anna Lundberg \ 9. From unemployment to sickness and poverty. The narratives and experiences of the unemployed in Trier and surroundings, 1918-1933 Tamara Stazic-Wendt \ 10. Narratives of ill-health in applicant letters from rural Germany, 1900-1930 Katrin Marx-Jaskulski \ 11. Asking for the privilege to work. Applications for a peddling licence (Austria in the 1920s and 1930s) Sigrid Wadauer \ Appendix: Narratives writ large Richard Dyson, Peter Wessel Hansen, Elizabeth Hurren and Steven King \ Bibliography \ Index