King has been studying poverty and poor relief in England for several decades.1 It is no surprise that Writing the Lives of the English Poor shows an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge of the social-welfare policies and practices of the long eighteenth century. In this book, such knowledge serves as a base for a focused, empathetic exploration of the writings of the poor who sought assistance from their parishes. King mixes the traditional methodology of a social historian—adept at categorizing and quantifying sources about poverty—with that of a literary scholar concerned to parse epistolary rhetoric. The result is a work that offers significant new insight, particularly in its insistence that poor-law historians must focus not on account books and policies but on sources that reveal the process of negotiation that resulted in the obtaining of poor relief.
The source base for this work is extraordinary—a corpus of more...