BIRTH, MARRIAGE & DEATH: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor England.

First edition, first printing. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper reproducing a paintinf of The Saltonstall Family (c. 1636-7) by David Des Granges. A fine copy, presenting as unread, the binding square and firm, the contents clean and bright throughout. In the fine, unclipped dustwrapper. A lovely copy.

Cressy's magisterial account of the life-cycle and the rituals marking its stages in Tudor and Stuart England remains the standard work on the subject. "It is a book with important ideas but not reliant on them, for its material is so extensive and often so novel in itself that it opens a door on a lost world of experience, dispelling popular myths and removing areas of scholarly ignorance." (Ronald Hutton in the TLS); "This is an important book that all English social historians will need to digest. [...] It is packed with fascinating anecdotes, and it is well written [...] a book to be read for pleasure and mined for evidence." (Norman Jones in 'The Journal of Modern History')