With this volume Craig Muldrew advances our understanding of living standards, industriousness, and the working lives of men, women, and children in rural England. A transformation in material culture, increased consumerism, and rising comfort are now accepted phenomena agreed to have reshaped life for much of England in the early modern era. This broad topic is still being carefully parsed, often with an urban orientation, whether focused on London or provincial towns and cities or with a closer analysis of trade in all its dimensions. Jan de Vries contributed one of the pivotal analytical precepts to earlier debates among economic historians about the standard of living in this period. He rejected then orthodox claims for material stasis made by historians influenced by data from eighteenth-century male wage earners. De Vries addressed contrasting evidence of changing diet and a wider array of goods among the middling ranks and even laborers, theorizing a preindustrial transformation that he termed the “industrious revolution.” The changes he identified for northwest Europe and Colonial America included new plebeian priorities and opportunities reflected in large measure by the reallocation of family labor, particularly that of women and children. Muldrew frames this volume in the context of De Vries’s industrious revolution, focusing on the majority of the population at work in England in this period: agricultural laborers. The author of this volume distils a voluminous range of sources, from farm accounts to poetry, brewing recipes to workhouse menus, plebeian memoirs to probate inventories. Muldrew also brings these historical data into conversation with contemporary science to determine the nutritional features of the meals served rural laborers over time. Were the calories supplied by meat, bread, vegetables, and ale sufficient to enable laborers to perform the heavy, sustained exertions demanded of them? The answers to this important question change over time, as after 1650 the growing productivity of agriculture is reflected in the larger quantities of food provided to agricultural laborers (including meat); all told, he finds more varied diets than has been assumed, confirming the recent assertions by Joan Thirsk on the variety of foodstuffs routinely consumed in various regions of the country. Industriousness at its core demands the ability to work harder longer. The greater quantities of food made available to English rural laborers after 1650 fueled their labors and helped retain valued workers for farmers, for Muldrew calculates that labor was at a premium. The years of surplus labor that characterized the early decades of the 1600s were at an end by midcentury. Agricultural workers also worked harder after 1650, often by choice. Steady employment mattered. Muldrew points to the important difference in food quality and quantity between those in regular work and those underemployed—a material differentiation among laborers emerges from this period onward. The access to food resources by laboring families is a key theme of this volume, food being essential fuel for an industrious population and England being peopled predominantly by rural folk. Muldrew likewise shows a real empathy with the varied physical demands of rural labor and the regional and seasonal pressures of life.

This is a richly empirical study. Muldrew assesses approximately a thousand laborers’ probate inventories from six counties, enabling him to trace changes in domestic life—finding a marked rise in quality of even the poorest laborers’ goods between 1650 and 1699. The numbers of items entered in probate inventories also increased with the notable presence of candlesticks and clocks or watches between 1730 and 1799. However, these changes occurred against the backdrop of increased dependence on wages and a declining access to smallholdings. There was also a growing complexity within the laboring classes as those willing and able to take on the mantle of industrious labor advanced in comfort, and those unable or unwilling suffered the pressing constraints of poverty. Being deemed an “industrious” worker became the highest accolade over this era, a quality that could be shared by men and women and was thought essential in the training of children and youth.

This data-rich volume challenges a variety of claims about agricultural wages and productivity within the precincts of economic historiography. The author is deeply cognizant of the variations that shaped agricultural practice, as well as the selective survival of quantifiable records from this period. He understands the significance of female and child labor in this mix. Women’s and girls’ contributions to family income are presented in compelling detail, noting, for instance, the fundamental importance of spinning as rural textile industries grew, a task that joined a plethora of other routine and seasonal jobs assigned this sex. He positions his claims within carefully considered caveats and, given his previous extensive work on early modern credit networks, it is no surprise to find a similar attention to the complexities of pay and perquisites in England’s rural communities. For example, Muldrew emphasizes the importance of nonmonetary additions to household budgets, whether with cheaper food from the farmer, access to grazing, or other benefits. In this respect, he notes the advantage that rural laborers had during times of rising food prices as they were less vulnerable than “miners, builders and cloth weavers [who] … earned higher nominal wages” paid in cash (233). By the 1700s, the working and material lives of rural laboring families had a markedly different cast than those of the early 1600s. Demand for labor outpaced supply, and the productivity of labor also grew over time. However, Muldrew reminds us that even as more rural laboring families enjoyed higher standards of living, not all were so fortunate, and expenditures on poor relief also increased. Muldrew brings important insights to the concept of “industriousness” and the value of rural labor over a strategic period of change.