Volume 23, Number 1 · February 5, 1976
Whigs, Marxists, and Poachers
By Lawrence Stone
Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England
by Douglas Hay, by Peter Linebaugh, by John G. Rule, by E. P. Thompson, by Cal Winslow
Pantheon, 352 pp., $5.95 (both books will be available in mid-February) (paper)
Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act
by E. P. Thompson
Pantheon, 313 pp., $5.95 (both books will be available in mid-February) (paper)
Twelve years ago, in 1963, Mr. E. P. Thompson exploded upon the historical scene with a book of erudition, imagination, and moral passion, The Making of the English Working Class. It is one of those books that inspire generations of scholars and students to either emulation or debunking, and it matters relatively little whether or not the major hypotheses stand the test of time. Maybe he was speaking only about a literate labor aristocracy and not about the working class generally; maybe he was grossly unfair to the Methodists; maybe the working class was not 'made' as and when he said it was. The book will still remain a towering work of historical literature.
Review, 3380 words
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