This book is a timely contribution to a field currently undergoing a burgeoning resurgence following the relatively dormant period between 1990 and 2010 when responses to the foundational work by Ariès and De Mause during the 1960s and 1970s had dwindled.1 The contributors’ brief is not only to show the possibilities of recovering the experiences of children and youth from a variety of backgrounds within a wide range of sources but also to illustrate how “the lens of age” can “further our understanding of broader historical issues” (3).
The range of sources and methodologies deployed within this single volume is prodigious, demonstrating that efforts to recover the agency of one of the most frustratingly inarticulate groups in the historical record can be richly repaid. The varied worlds of children and young people are glimpsed in royal archives, debt litigation, letters and diaries, archaeological finds, Gaelic song, lyric literature, family...