The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700 - Hardcover

`by far the most impressive and fascinating work of historical scholarship in this field ... the sheer quantity of sources is breathtaking ... fascinating book' Sunday Telegraph

`Ronald Hutton makes fellow-historians whistle with envy, jealousy and admiration ... repeatedly, Hutton courteously undermines his colleagues' confident generalisations with his piles of evidence ... a deeply fascinating and important book.'New Statesman & Society

`a jewel of a subject ... Hutton's book thrums with academic controversy'Observer

`Hutton has written a scholarly text that convinces and delights through his masterly deployment of illustrative detail.'The Observer

'Ronald Hutton's The Rise and Fall of Merry England is by far the most impressive and fascinating work of historical scholarship in this field to have appeared since Keith Thomas's book came out a generation ago. The range of issues covered ... is huge, the organisation of argument and material is lucid and compact and the sheer quantity of sources investigated is quite breathtaking.'Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

'This is a book of rare quality ... Ranging over three centuries, and the fruit of research on the most massive scale ... Elegantly written, unfailingly courteous in tone and the product of prodigious learning.'John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph

'This is an outstanding book, original and provocative, vigorously and courteously argued, and written with a vivid sense of the immediacy of the past - of Merry England's jollity as well as its pathos. It is one of the finest books on early modern England to have appeared in the last decade.'John Adamson, The Times

'a deeply fascinating and important book'Diarmaid MacCulloch, New Statesman & Society

'fascinating study ... Hutton's study is engagingly frank about the limitations of evidence, and adept at weighing the probabilities when it is not conclusive. Through areas of the greatest controversy, he moves respectfully and critically, eschewing simplicities, lucidly summarising and adding incisive suggestions of his own.'Kevin Sharpe, Independent

`This is a thoughtful, ground-breaking study.'Rosanna de Lisle, Independent on Sunday

The Rise and Fall of Merry Englandexplores the religious and secular rituals which marked the passage of the year in late medieval and early modern England, and tells the story of how they altered over time in response to political, religious, and social changes. Ronald Hutton examines a number of important and controversial issues, such as the character and pace of the English Reformation, the nature of the early Stuart `Reformation of Manners', the context of writers like Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick, the origins of the science of folklore, the relevance of cultural divisions to the English Civil War, the impact of the English Revolution, and the viability of economic explanations for social change.

Never before has such a comprehensive study of the subject been undertaken, and it has been made possible by using categories of source material, notably local financial records, in a quantity never attempted hitherto. This is highly readable and entertaining book which, in both research and interpretation, breaks several frontiers.