By taking on a long-term perspective, a large geographical scope and moving beyond the homogeneous treatment of single people, this book fleshes out the particularities of urban singles and allows for a better understanding of the attitudes and values underlying this lifestyle in the European past.
Contents
1. Working Alone? Single Women in the Urban Economy of Late Medieval Flanders (Thirteenth-Early Fifteenth Centuries); Peter Stabel
2. Creating a Space for Themselves on the Urban Market. Survival Strategies and Economic Opportunities for Single Women in French Provincial Towns (Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries); Anne Montenach
3. Maids, Noblewomen, Journeymen, State Officials, and Others. Unmarried Adults in Four Swedish Towns, 1750-1855; Dag Lindström
4. Destitute in December. Unmarried Scots Navigating Poverty in Paisley, 1861; Wendy M. Gordon
5. Desperately Seeking the Single Man in Later Medieval England; P.J.P. Goldberg
6. To Be or not to Be a Beguine in an Early Modern Town: Piety or Pragmatism? The Great Beguinage of St. Catherine in Sixteenth-Century Mechelen; Kim Overlaet
7. 'Why did she not live with her husband and how was she able to support herself?' Grass Widow Prostitutes in Eighteenth-Century Bruges; Maja Mechant
8. Single Life in Fifteenth-Century Bruges. Living Arrangements and Material Culture at the Fringes of Urban Society; Inneke Baatsen, Julie De Groot and Isis Sturtewagen
9. Single People and the Material Culture of the English Urban Home in the Long Eighteenth Century; David Hussey and Margaret Ponsonby
10. Rich, Male and Single. The Consumption Practices of Edward Leigh, 1742-1786; Jon Stobart
