Accommodating Poverty: The Housing and Living Arrangements of the English Poor, C.1600-1850

While the history of poverty in England has recently enjoyed a revival in academic attention, little is yet known about the history of the poor and their households. Accommodating Poverty investigates how poor people lived, what their households looked like and how they themselves perceived their household experiences. This comprehensive study is an important addition to wider investigations into British economic and social conditions in the long eighteenth century.

Joanne McEwan was recently awarded her doctorate by the University of Western Australia, where she currently teaches history and medieval and early modern studies. She has previously published on experiences of lodging in late seventeenth-and eighteenth-century London and has delivered papers on living arrangements and various aspects of gendered crime in London.
Pamela Sharpe is Professor of History at the University of Tasmania and previously worked at the University of Western Australia. Among her other publications are Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640-1840, edited with Tim Hitchcock and Peter King, which was the forerunner to Accommodating Poverty.