The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: A Seventeenth-Century Clergyman

by Alan Macfarlane

The great merit of Macfarlane s book is that it poses questions; it teaches historians to look very much more closely, and in new ways, at familiar evidence; it brings familiar relationships into the centre of scrutiny; and it offers, in a significant way, the unit of one man s life, and of one man s economic fortunes, as a focus of study. E. P. Thompson, Midland History"

Genres: Biography, History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[Sean]

There is an initial chapter entitled "Diary-Keeping in Seventeenth Century England". There were three primary motives for keeping a diary: (1) economic, e.g., account books; (2) aid to memory ; (3) religious. Very few address the "economic, personal and political, and the religious". The author has identified only three in the time period: Rev. Oliver Heywood, Samuel Pepys, and Ralph Josselin.

[Jeff Crosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great use of primary documents.

[Kathryn Baron · Rating 2 out of 5]

College Textbook

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my Ordinary People class.