Graduate Student Reading Room at Stephens Hall

reading room
Originally uploaded by joguldi.

...where the coffee is only $0.75.

What I'm working on these days: reading.

• R. A. Leeson, Travelling Brothers: The six centuries' road from craft fellowship to trade unionism, 1979
  
• Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 1580-1800: The origins of an associational world, 2000.
  
• Walter Dexter, Some Rogues and Vagabonds of Dickens, 1927.

I am generally working on the history of vagrants, tramping, traveling artisans, itinerant ministers, migration, and the Irish; getting a good sense of who was on the road when and how far they travelled.

By the 1790s, many of my precious eccentrics are regularly walking 1500 miles in a year around the shires and villages of old England, expecting beer, hospitality, solid inns, and friendly fellows wherever they go.



Technorati Tags: academic, history, dickens, migration, roads, vagabonds, masons, travelers, itinerants, britain,