Questions regarding the nature of women's work in pre-industrial societies have preoccupied women's and social historians since the work of Alice Clark and Ivy Pinchbeck in the early twentieth century. Marjorie McIntosh's new book supplies both a lucid summary of the state of the field and important new research and interpretations of continuity and change in women's work in late medieval and early modern England.

McIntosh's source base is impressively diverse, both in terms of its regional scope and in the disparate types of sources she has mined. Poll taxes from 1377–1381 are a central source for quantitative information on the late medieval period, and equity court petitions, available from 1470, are revealing for qualitative and quantitative purposes for the later period. In addition, she has studied five market centers that are both economically and geographically distinct, making particular use of the “aletasters” reports that are available in some cases for the entirety of her period. (Aletasters reports list the names of each individual or head of household who worked in the food and drink trade for local court records.) Because McIntosh is also able to exploit her extensive archival research from her many previous studies, as well as a now substantial body of secondary works on her subject, we have here a fairly slim volume that rests on an almost unequalled amount and quality of archival evidence. Not surprisingly, then, her conclusions carry tremendous weight and will likely be considered authoritative for some time to come.

The book generally confirms the more pessimistic interpretation of women's work that has come to dominate the field. Although women were present and active in a wide range of work activities outside the home—domestic and personal service, financial services and real estate, making and selling goods, drink work, and skilled crafts—they almost always worked predominantly at the lowest end and at the least remunerative jobs within these occupations. Important exceptions to this rule included women's work in silk manufacturing and retailing in London, and women's role in the drink trade before the end of the fifteenth century. Still, McIntosh includes many rich (and even entertaining) anecdotes and case studies, which render the generalized account of women's work infinitely complex. The picture that emerges is of clear general principles applying to the majority of women—principles that served to deeply disable women from high status and high profit occupations—with infinite loopholes and exceptions. Women with exceptional initiative who had the wherewithal and strength of character could seize opportunities and overcome cultural, social, and economic disabilities to succeed in many aspects of the pre-industrial economy.

McIntosh explores with great subtlety the changes in women's work experiences over the later medieval and early modern period. Overall, she finds a decline in women's economic expectations from the early sixteenth century. Although she challenges the notion that there was any “Golden Age” for women's work in the later medieval period, she does find substantial improvements in women's opportunities in the post-Black Death era (mid-fourteenth to later fifteenth centuries), when social and demographic changes created more need for, and hence more acceptance of women's economic activities. This state of affairs altered with the changing social, economic, demographic, and cultural climate of the sixteenth century. England's growing population meant more competition for employment. The expanded world of trade and credit worked to women's disadvantage, as it necessitated more travel and privileged those who traded on the larger scale (i.e., men). Because it witnessed rising concerns regarding social order, sixteenth-century English society was less accepting of independent and uncontrolled women. For the time period 1300–1620, then, McIntosh demonstrates that women's fortunes fluctuated significantly, despite the overall continuity of their lesser status and constrained experiences compared to those of men.

One of the most interesting and significant sections of the book delves deeply into the “historical puzzle” of women's apparent disappearance from the drink trade between about 1490 and 1540. McIntosh uses the aletasters' reports to demonstrate that women brewers had held a relatively high status in their communities; their evident abandonment of such roles is thus particularly striking. Here, as elsewhere in the text, McIntosh is in close dialogue with the work of Judith Bennett (e.g. Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). McIntosh subtly revises Bennett's views, demonstrating that women's transition out of the drink trade was more abrupt, and more tied to local demographic and economic factors, than previously believed. Although she convincingly argues that this was a real change in women's economic experience, McIntosh also posits an alternative interpretation for this transition. It is possible that there was a change in recording practice, which would have meant that women's roles in brewing were hidden by a new method of record keeping among aletasters, in which the head of the household was recorded as the brewer, rather than the wife who did the brewing. She dismisses this possibility quite quickly, without really looking into the context of other changes in record keeping, which might have helped to shed more light on this issue. Still, her clear method of laying out this historical puzzle, the posing of the alternative interpretations, and her incisive analysis make this section a model for historical research and analysis that even lower-level undergraduates will be able to follow and appreciate.

Indeed, while this volume is an important contribution to historical scholarship on the topic of women's work in the later medieval and early modern period, it has an equally high value as an accessible, comprehensive and appealing text for undergraduate study. As someone who co-teaches a course on premodern women with a medieval colleague, I welcome this book with tremendous enthusiasm. It not only covers its topic well, but also it introduces students to larger historiographic debates in a way that is both concise and comprehensive.