Spufford, Margaret, 1935-2014

Margaret Spufford was one of the most original and influential social and cultural historians of early modern England active over the last century, despite never completing a first degree or having an established academic job until she was almost sixty. She was the author of a pioneering comparative study of inheritance practices, economic change and popular belief in three Cambridge villages, and of many fundamental studies of the education, religion, reading and clothing of the ‘common people’ of early modern England. All this was achieved despite her own ill-health, and the genetic disorder and early death of her daughter.

Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, XVIII