This impressive edited volume presents a range of case-studies on the housing and living arrangements of the poor from the seventeenth to the first half of the nineteenth century. In 11 essays, the reader is offered new and varied insights into the experiences of the settled poor who spent a lifetime under a single roof, vagrants who travelled from place to place making a living from begging and those who lived in other people's houses as servants and apprentices. The volume engages with the practicalities of living in rented accommodation, such as the impact of rental values on residential choices and the extent of and arrangements for personal possessions. We encounter the poor at various stages of their lifecycle in cottages, lodging houses, workhouses and almshouses. Those who are new to the study of poverty will benefit from the wide coverage of this collection and those who are veterans will find much in it that expands on current scholarship.

The volume is split evenly between papers on town and country, which means urban historians will find a lot to interest them here. Jeremy Boulton, Joanne McEwan, Samantha K. Williams, Alannah Tomkins and Leonard Schwarz and Jeremy Boulton (in a second contribution) concentrate on the domestic experiences of the urban poor – though several other regionally focused papers include examples from towns. The organization of the volume by theme rather than geography reinforces the importance of the multiple settings and experiences of the poor, many of whom crossed the urban/rural divide in search of a living. Sarah Lloyd's paper on housing in Britain and the British Colonies serves as a reminder that the poor crossed international, as well as national, boundaries. However, the predominant focus of the urban articles on London means that an appreciation of the domestic experiences of poverty in provincial towns is limited. While several articles include case-studies from towns outside London, most are in southern England. Alannah Tomkins’ contribution on urban almshouses is the only one that includes several examples from towns in the north. This is perhaps unsurprising given the number of superb resources that are now available online for the study of the poor in London. Many of the articles draw on primary sources collated for the Pauper Lives, London Lives and Proceedings of the Old Bailey projects.

The essays are organized into three sections. The first deals with the material and symbolic value of accommodation, as part of which Joanne McEwan's paper stands out in its skilful use of legal narratives such as depositions and courtroom testimonies to reveal the often elusive occupants of London lodging houses, the relationships between lodgers and landlords and negotiations of shared and private spaces. Samantha K. Williams’ excellent contribution towards the second section on household composition and mobility provides a perceptive and engaging account of the movements of unmarried young women who found themselves pregnant using the petitions they wrote to the London Foundling Hospital in the early nineteenth century. The final section draws together research into the housing provisions of parishes and charities and includes a revealing essay from Jeremy Boulton and Leonard Schwarz who evaluate the low numbers of elderly people admitted to London parish workhouses and the varied strategies they used in seeking shelter.

This edited volume was envisaged as a successor to an important collection of essays published by Pamela Sharpe with Tim Hitchcock and Peter King in 1997: Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840, which opened up the study of poverty by revealing the experiences of the poor through their own personal perspectives. Accommodating Poverty succeeds admirably in tackling a further important question about the housing and living arrangements of the poor by using equally enlightening historical sources. Although this volume was always intended as a historical text, Sharpe and McEwan are shrewd in acknowledging the value of an interdisciplinary approach in the explanation of the housing of the poor. Contributions by Adrian Green and John Broad make worthy use of archaeology and vernacular architecture to elucidate the housing of the rural poor. However, this approach could have been used more to clarify domestic space and material culture within the urban-based papers. That said, all the contributions are worthy of inclusion in their own right and the collection holds together exceptionally well as a volume. This will become a valuable addition to undergraduate and postgraduate reading lists and is a must-have for the libraries of specialists.