A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1297-1344

Book Description

This history of medieval village life is told through the experiences of Cecilia Penifader, a peasant woman who lived on one English manor in the early fourteenth century. This truly unique book offers a wealth of insight into medieval peasant society, bringing many of the characteristics of a time and a people to life. Short and readable, it is an ideal text for undergraduate teaching, suitable for courses in Western civilization, medieval history, women's history, and English history.

Customer Reviews:

Full of "perhaps" and "maybes".......2007-04-08

Admittedly I wasn't reading this book for pleasure, as I had to read it for a class, but it is very poor indeed. Okay, I'm not a PhD historian like Bennett, but that shouldn't mean my criticism is invalid. The book is an interesting concept, trying find out what a peasant's life was like, but is just FULL of "perhaps she did this..." and "maybe she did that..." Bennett, in reality, is writing a book about the medieval peasantry, trying to make it interesting and accessible to college students by making the book revolve around a character. However, the book proves condescending, and left me very frustrated as a slammed the book shut on the final page. Here are a few examples:

"I felt as if Cecilia was demanding...that I write her life" p. 138

And regarding the 'doodle' in the court records: "If Cecilia is the woman shown in this drawing, we can surmise that she was tall, thin, curly-headed, and perhaps the bearer of a prominent nose" p. 130

As with many other textbooks for college, this was too expensive for only 138 pages, and should be the $10 it is in the Marketplace, not the $30 that my bookstore was charging.

The unfortunate truth is that it will be very difficult to ever know what life was like for the average medieval peasant since they did not write anything, and Bennett's account seems to add no real value to this subject area, and the 'story' of Cecilia Penifader could have easily been summarized on a page or two.

An interesting book about a peasant's life.......2006-08-17

This was an assigned book in my Medieval History class. It's not a thorough book, but that would be almost (if not entirely) impossible given the fact that Cecilia Penifader was a peasant and peasants' lives were irrelevant and unimportant to the rest of medieval society. Still, the book gives you a good understanding of what life would have been like for this particular woman in terms of work, religion, family, dealing with manorial courts and the harsh existence for peasants.

I found the book interesting. It's an easy read and though the author has to make inferences about Penifader's life, it is a well written book that at least gives some "face" to the typically unknown peasant. Bennett (the author) uses records from the courts and other written records of the times to at least give a good outline of Penifader's life.

cecilia who?.......2005-04-11

This book was written to give the reader a sense of what life was like in the Middle Ages and it did, however, the author tried to use the life of Cecilia Penifader as an example-bad choice. There is very little information about this woman (especially to write a book over)and it was a guessing game at what she did or did not do. Without Cecila and her family information this book probably would have been 10 pages shorter and still given the reader a look into life in a medeival town.

Price is nuts.......2004-01-30

Its a good book, but they're nuts to think a 120 page paperback is worth 28 dollars. I was going to assign this to my class, but no way at that price.

An Excellent Primer for Medieval History.......2000-10-04

I recently read this book for a history class and have to say that the book is very enjoyable. It's brevity and clarity make it a great introduction to medieval history. Cecilia Penifader was a well-to-do peasant woman living in Brigstock, England in the early 14th century. Bennett uses Cecilia to introduce the reader to all aspects of peasant life in this time period. There are in-depth studies of economics, religion, living conditions, and gender roles, as well as other interesting facets of peasant life. Bennett also makes sure to include some interesting little tidbits, such as the role of contraception during this period.

One of the best things to be said about this book is how Bennett highlights terms that the reader is most likely to not be familiar with. These words are listed in a handy glossary in the back of the book. Most people aren't familiar with terms such as heliot, so this addition to the book is very helpful. As mentioned above, the brevity and clarity of the book go a long way to making the text more enjoyable. The book foregoes footnotes and endnotes, which would certainly help the non-scholars who can't stand wading through tons of citations. There are also some nice diagrams that help the reader visualize various aspects of peasant life.

The lack of footnotes and endnotes is a problem for the historian and student, such as myself. I wouldn't go so far as the other reviewer here and pan the entire book, but that reviewer certainly has a point. Bennett also relies on inference more than she probably should. Although her deductions seem sound, her conclusions, backed up with more evidence and properly cited, would have been much appreciated.

Book Description

In rural England prior to the Industrial Revolution people generally married when they were not busy with work. Parish registers of marriage therefore form an important and innovative source for the study of economic change in this period. Dr Kussmaul employs marriage dates to identify three main patterns of work and risk (arable, pastoral and rural industrial) and more importantly to show the long-term changes in economic activities across 542 English parishes from the beginning of national marriage registration in 1538. No single historical landscape emerges. Instead A General View of the Rural Economy of England, 1538–1840 maps the changes in economic orientation from arable through regional specialization to rural industrialization and explores how these changes had implications for the extent of population growth in the early modern period. Dr Kussmaul’s study presents a view of early modern English economic history from a unique standpoint.

From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers

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Worth three and a half stars, but not easy reading.

From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers
Allan Kulikoff
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807848824
Release Date: 2000-10-25

Book Description

With this book, Allan Kulikoff offers a sweeping new interpretation of the origins and development of the small farm economy in Britain's mainland American colonies. Examining the lives of farmers and their families, he tells the story of immigration to the colonies, traces patterns of settlement, analyzes the growth of markets, and assesses the impact of the Revolution on small farm society.

Beginning with the dispossession of the peasantry in early modern England, Kulikoff follows the immigrants across the Atlantic to explore how they reacted to a hostile new environment and its Indian inhabitants. He discusses how colonists secured land, built farms, and bequeathed those farms to their children. Emphasizing commodity markets in early America, Kulikoff shows that without British demand for the colonists' crops, settlement could not have begun at all. Most important, he explores the destruction caused during the American Revolution, showing how the war thrust farmers into subsistence production and how they only gradually regained their prewar prosperity.

Customer Reviews:

Worth three and a half stars, but not easy reading........2001-03-22

For nearly forty years, historians have concentrated their attention on the social history of the common people. In American historiography in particular, remarkable progress has been made in the history of slaves, industrial workers and the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent. But one group of people has not been treated with the prominence they deserve, and that is the rural majority of the first century and a half of the nation's existence. 95% of the United States was rural in 1776, and when you exclude the quarter that was slave and aboriginal, you have 70% that consisted of country people and their families, most of whom had or would eventually own land. It is clear that this high level of economic independence was crucial to the development of American democracy. Allan Kulikoff's book is the first of a multi-volume series that will examine the history of the American yeomen. Kulikoff concentrates on how farmers sought a degree of independence and security from the capitalist market. "Capitalist transformation, then, stands at the center of our story." In contrast to other historians Kulikoff argues that capitalism, crucially defined as a system of wage labor, "had not yet reached our shores as late as the American Revolution."

The result is a synthesis of the Colonial farmer to the American Revolution based on amazingly extensive reading of the secondary literature. This has to be the first book where the bibliography (104 pages) is longer than the endnotes (73 pages), and Kulikoff seems to have read every scholarly article on rural history. However, the actual connection between yeomanry and the rise of democracy is slated for another volume, as is their eventual demise. What we have here is a book that discusses the economics changes that lead the British and later the Germans to move to America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We have a chapter on how emigration took place, how the new immigrants met and eventually conquered the Indians, how they expanded up until 1776 and how they set up households and fixed themselves in relations to markets. Crucial to Kulikoff's account is how enclosure and other acts against the peasantry encouraged mass migration. Most migrants in fact moved within Europe (either to Ulster or to Eastern Europe), but enough moved to the Western hemisphere to successfully conquer it.

All this is very thorough and thoughtful but it is not easy reading. One problem is that Kulikoff abbreviates the books he is citing in his notes, so not only do you have to turn from your reading to the endnotes(which is always irritating), but then you often have to move from the endnotes to the bibliography. I am aware that many readers have a philistine prejudice against footnotes, but since this is not a book for a general audience their opinions should be ignored. Because of the structural focus of Kulikoff's work, the human element is somewhat downplayed in this book. Despite talking about such subjects as the dispossession of the British peasantry, war and atrocities against the Indians, the beating of wives and the maltreatment of servants, Kulikoff writes about these subjects in a style with the life bleached out of it. The contrast with Thompson and Genovese is striking. One might cruelly say that there is much here about demography, but little actual sex, much about diet as an ecological concept but little about food. While Kulikoff is right to discuss the ill-treatment of servants, the subordination of women and the first shoots of the weeds of a rural proletariat, more could have been said about the general trends in the standard of living, especially compared to Britain. Moreover what scholarly differences Kulikoff has are confined to brief comments in the endnotes, so Kulikoff's own voice is blurred. The result is that it is not clear to the reader that Kulikoff is saying something new. As such his emphasis that farmers were not simply small scale capitalists and that landownership rates rose as high as 90% in many areas of America is not made as forcefully as it could be. Only the last chapter, actually the epilogue, does Kulikoff come to life as he portrays a new picture of the American Revolution as a violent conflict, with various armies looting and pillaging both sides. There was mass emigration and hundreds were killed, indeed murdered, in Indian wars alone. (One remembers in particular the massacre of 90 peaceful praying Moravian Delawares who were slaughtered by frontier militia as they sang hymns and prayed.) Given the way American conservatives have prided themselves on their "successful" revolution in contrast to the French, it is very useful to learn that the per-capital income dropped more than 40% during the decade of revolution and had not returned to its pre-war level thirty years later. One can only wait for the next volume.

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Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 16601900 (Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time)
K. D. M. Snell
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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An increasing number of organizations are realizing the need for a Web site to publicize their products and services. This 200-page CTR report assists the webmaster in designing, developing, maintaining, and enhancing state-of-the-art Web sites. It describes techniques, products, and new technologies that will be integral to Web site development in the future.

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CTR's report, Implementing a World Wide Web Site for Your Organization, is a guide for designing, maintaining, using, and protecting a company's Web site. Today's businesses are taking advantage of the Web to sell products, publicize their services, and reach new customers worldwide.

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Book Description

Let the fine art of haggling save you hundreds of dollars on everything from stereos, TVs and guns to jewelry, cars and real estate. Old pro Max Edison walks you through the psychology of negotiation, special precautions to take before you buy or sell anything, how to build your case for the best possible deal and more.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting point of view, but not very informative........2007-06-13

This book was written by a pawn-shop owner, and I believe the author provides a good summary of how haggling works from that point of view.

A substantial portion of the book is spent explaining how to appraise diamonds and firearms, which does eventually relate back to the main theme, but seems superfluous and added merely as filler. With a book less than 60 pages, filler material is most unwelcome. I read the book cover to cover in about 20 minutes, and it felt more like reading a high-school essay on pawn-shops than a book about human nature.

Best $35 I have ever spent.......2002-01-05

They say Americans don't like to haggle. This doesn't mean you can't do it in almost every purchasing situation. This book inspired me.

Awesome Power available in convenient book form.......2001-12-25

This book opened my eyes to the world of haggling - I've been paying too much for things in the past!

I like the Author's conversational and realistic writing style... amust read for anyone who buys things.

5 stars, as we can't give it 6!

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