Customer Reviews

Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most historical books of this sort are amazingly dry; this one is not. Mr. Cressy has done a huge amount of research, and the text is peppered with primary source quotations. I now have a real feel for what these experiences were like in Tudor & Stuart England. I plan to buy whatever other material Mr. Cressy has written--I found him an easy, extremely informative read.

I actually had to read this for an MA class in history and it's definitely a textbook of the Tudor and Stuart time period but it wasn't as dry as I had expected it to be, thanks to Mr. Cressy's amazing writing ability. But it is thoroughly researched and offers up very important conclusions about the social life of the Tudor/Stuart period and anyone who wants the recent and best literature on the subject should read this book.

I've just finished writing a series of books about life in Elizabethan England, and this book was invaluable to me in my research. It is full of interesting details about how people in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England approached and experienced the major transition points of the life cycle. I would have read and enjoyed Birth, Marriage, and Death even if I had not needed it as a reference, and I would heartily recommend it to any reader who wants to get a feel for this time period.