People, environment, disease and death: a medical geography of Britain throughout the ages

demographic information, opening up new and exciting issues of debate. We are now able to chart, with some confidence, the chronology of population change from the Black Death to the present day. Analyses of shifts in age-specific mortality, age at marriage, matemal mortality and a host of other demographic variables are helping to enrich our understanding of the past and to throw new light on the interrelationships between demographic, social, economic and epidemiological changes. Many questions remain to be explored and answered, and the subject of population history will continue, into the next century, to be as stimulating and tantalizing as ever. This edition aims to bring together in a coherent and readable manner some of the main findings and debates which have stemmed from the prolific outpouring of scholarly work on the population history of Britain and Europe. While many of the original studies remain highly technical, this volume is ideally suited to students and non-specialist readers. It contains five extremely well written essays covering English population change from 1348 to 1991; some essays also contain information on Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and one encompasses north-westem Europe. The essays, however, are not new. Readers familiar with the series Studies in Economic and Social History will immediately recognize that four of these essays have been published before-one as long ago as 1977. The original individual paperback books (of roughly 80 to 90 pages each and currently priced at £6.95) have always been popular with students and are still widely available in libraries and bookshops. John Hatcher's excellent piece on 'Plague, population and the English economy, 1348-1530' was first published in 1977 and has not been altered in this edition. According to the editor: "the basic trends which it proposes have largely been confirmed by subsequent work, and the demographic processes underlying the trends remain subject to debate". Michael Anderson's essay on 'Population change in north-westem Europe, 1750-1850' was originally published in 1988; R A Houston's chapter 'The population history of Britain and Ireland, 1500-1750' and R I Woods' 'The population of Britain in the nineteenth century' were published in 1992. The only new, and very welcome addition is the essay by Michael Anderson on 'British population history, 1911-1991'. While this collection provides a useful synthesis for students and non-specialists, it is a great pity that the original essays have not been up-dated to include recent material and references. This will be disappointing for readers who are looking for the latest ideas on a topic or who are expecting a good introduction to current discussions in population history. Omissions from the bibliographies of key works published in the last ten to twenty years will prove especially frustrating.