English Local History: An Introduction (History Handbooks) [Paperback]

Kate Tiller (Author)

Book Description

Series: History Handbooks | Publication Date: January 1, 1992

This guide is designed as an introduction to local history for anyone who wants to know how local communities lived in the past and how to find out more about them. General themes and and questions for each historical period, combined with specific case histories, highlight the varieties of local experience and show how available materials can be pieced together. The book stresses the interconnectedness of local history with wider issues and urges local historians to abandon reliance on unconnected facts and dig deeper to uncover the general trends at work.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kate Tiller is Reader in English Local History at the University of Oxford. She planned the undergraduate certificate in local history jointly run by Oxford University and the Open University, and initiated and now directs Oxford's first master's degree in local history.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: The History Press; 2 edition (January 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750927143
• ISBN-13: 978-0750927147
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,053,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good local history of England, and how to research it., March 21, 1998

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This review is from: English Local History: An Introduction (General History) (Paperback)

Dr. Tiller is a central figure in the renaissance of English local history studies that has taken place over the last 20 years. In this book, her unapologetic promotion of the "new" local history is strong. This "new" history usually concentrates on thematic studies of communities, and tracks individual lives within those communities. This tends to de-emphasize, for example, landscape studies, or those eras, so important for many of the places that we study, where tracking individuals is often impossible (e.g. Anglo-saxon or earlier periods). Whilst probably not "local history" in the true sense, Dr. Tiller seems to have little regard for the genealogists or those merely seeking nostalgia. We should remember that it is these motives, within the general public, that are the engines which drive the politicians to support the county record offices, which in turn, facilitate the serious studies that Dr. Tiller proposes. Unexpectedly, this book is in fact a good general introduction to the local history of England, as well as being a sophisticated "how to" volume. This is distinctive, therefore, amongst the fairly large bibliography on researching english local history that now exists. An interesting foil is provided by the recent book by Michael A. Williams, "Researching Local History", which is one man's journey around some of the later aspects of the subject. Professor Williams's is also a sophisticated "how to" volume but lacks Dr. Tiller's comprehensiveness. If you want a single volume as a general introduction to the local history of England, then buy Tiller. As a bonus, you will also get a good guide to research techniques, that is probably about as good as any other that is available on this subject.