MANY FRIENDS AND colleagues have been kind enough to offer advice and criticism on this project at various stages. I would like to thank Silvia Evangelisti, Tim Hitchcock, Jane Humphries, Gareth Stedman Jones and Leigh Shaw-Taylor for discussing this project. I am particularly grateful to Gregory Claeys, David Craig, Christopher Ferguson, John Hatcher, Richard Huzzey, Jo Innes, Steve King, Peter Mandler, Sarah Pearsall, Heather Savigny, Anne Secord, Patrick Wallis and Andy Wood for reading and commenting on work in progress. Carolyn Steedman let me read her work on Joseph Woolley and that and the communications that followed have been of immense value. Robert Poole has helped me out with queries about Samuel Bamford, and Christopher Ferguson has set me straight on points of detail concerning James Carter. I am grateful to all for countless corrections and for helping me to improve my argument and expression in significant ways.
I have had the opportunity to present ideas to seminar audiences at the Cambridge Group for Population History; the Local Population Studies Society; Robinson College, Cambridge; Southampton University; Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; the Institute of Historical Research, London; All Souls College, Oxford; and St Anne’s College, Oxford. I must thank the organisers of these events for their invitations and the audiences for invaluable criticism, advice and encouragement. What follows is certainly the better for its engagement with so many critical listeners.
The actual completion of this book was made possible only by a research fellowship from the Arts and Humanity Research Council and a year’s study leave from the University of East Anglia. My thanks are due to both institutions for these much valued periods of research leave.
My greatest debt goes to my husband, David Milne, who discussed the big ideas of the project and pored over the smallest details of countless draft chapters, all the while sharing equally in the running of a home and the raising of our two small children. This book is dedicated with love and gratitude to David, Benedict and Anna.