Marriage has long been a staple topic of social history, but this new book offers a fresh perspective on the subject that raises some major questions about our understandings of social change in early modern Britain. R. Houston's focus is not on married life but on the festivities that accompanied getting married, and in particular on contributory weddings – variously known as bride ales or penny weddings – which were open, public events at which guests paid for their own entertainment and gave gifts to the couple. Through a close engagement with records of regulation, contemporary diaries, and folklore, Houston unpacks these weddings to reveal the – regionally specific – social and cultural formations that they expressed. In the process the book makes contributions to the literatures on early modern marriage, sociability, food and drink, hospitality, gift exchange, poor relief, civil society, popular culture and social relations. In two respects the main arguments of the book build on developing trends in early modern social and cultural history: an emphasis on the importance of routine sociability as a window onto social relationships; and a stress on more positive aspects of social relations, on forces of social cohesion in a society for which so much of the historiography has been dominated by stories of conflict. In a third respect its contribution runs more against the grain: it is a call to reconsider the orthodoxy on explanations of socio-cultural change in the period, in particular by paying greater attention to regional differences.

The book is comprised of eighteen chapters in four ‘Parts’. Part I maps out a contrast in the nature of communal drinkings in early modern Britain. The most prevalent of these in the south and east of England were church ales, organised by the parish for the benefit of the church. These enjoyed a late medieval heyday before declining in the face of official hostility after the Reformation. In the region identified by Houston as ‘middle Britain’, however – Wales, Lowland Scotland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire, Cheshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and parts of Derbyshire and Shropshire – church ales of this sort had never been especially prominent. Instead, rituals of communal drinking tended to be unofficial or private – not organised by the parish authorities but by community initiative – and remained a vibrant feature of the recreational landscape well into the nineteenth century. Part II turns to the most significant of these drinkings in middle Britain, contributory weddings. If weddings in the south and east were small scale and low key, those in the north and west of Britain could involve anywhere up to 400 contributing guests; were held by the artisanal and middling classes rather than the very poor; were more common in times of plenty than times of hardship; and involved considerable liberality and consumption. They were attended by a wide segment of the local social order, including the gentry, and took place in towns that had the necessary facilities – such as taverns – to accommodate them. Most importantly for Houston's argument they were not principally about newlyweds making a decent profit, but rather represented an example of ‘generalised reciprocity’, in which gifts were given not in the expectation of direct repayment but rather as an expression of accepting the couple into a broader community of reciprocity. The principal gains for both givers and receivers of gifts were the enhancement of social capital and the nurturing of communal belonging. The profits were socio-cultural as much as material.

Part III examines aspects of the power relations of such gift exchange, highlighting that it was not always an expression of cosy neighbourliness: some customary forms of gift giving had a coercive dimension. Part IV attempts to explain the prevalence of contributory weddings in middle Britain. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiquarians tended to see them as ‘old-fashioned’ survivals in more rustic areas of the country that had yet to benefit from the march of urbanisation and Enlightenment, and it is implied that historians have too often followed this lead. Houston is keen to emphasise that middle Britain was not old-fashioned relative to south-east England, but rather differently fashioned. It was marked by the predominance of small farms reliant on family rather than waged labour; rated poor relief was uncommon; social polarisation was less marked; and thus an ‘ethos of self-help’ prevailed. Whilst Houston is quick to offer the caveat that middle British culture was not without conflict, it is clear that he identifies a ‘regionally related mentality’ there, in which trust, community and reciprocity were more highly valued than they were in the south east, and that such values help explain the prevalence and character of contributory weddings.

What is less clear is precisely why middle Britain was marked by this more reciprocal mentality. Houston is eager to avoid the charge of economic determinism, and also rejects any possible role for a shared ‘Celtic’ ethnic inheritance (indeed, the Highlands and Islands and Ireland are seen as another distinct region, quite different from middle Britain), though there was possibly a shared Scandinavian inheritance that played a role. The decline of contributory weddings, which occurred in the nineteenth century, is firmly attributed to changes in patterns of time-use – although this significant conclusion is not developed at length – but this still leaves unsatisfactorily answered the question of why exactly the two regions of middle Britain and south-east England had such different mentalities in the first place. Ultimately the book offers a welcome challenge to our understandings of social and cultural change in the early modern period, which are undoubtedly dominated by a south-eastern focus, and demands that we think more carefully, and regionally, about explaining change. That said, whilst this is an important argument and a helpful intervention, it falls short of providing a convincing explanation for the regional differences observed. If it nonetheless manages to inspire serious reconsideration of well-entrenched narratives of social and cultural change in early modern Britain then it will still represent one of the most significant contributions to the field in recent years.