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Gervase Rosser , The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250-1550 . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2015. 235pp. 8 b&w illustrations. £60.00 hbk.
Review of Books
In 1997, Gervase Rosser published an article in Past and Present on 'crafts, guilds, and the negotiation of work in the medieval town' that would become a classic of the guilds literature. He argued that both the 'worker' and the 'guild' were much more variegated, and therefore interesting, phenomena than one would assume reading the historical literature. In his latest book, Rosser returns to the topic in a fashion that is simultaneously broader and narrower in scope than the paper. The limitation is, of course, in the focus on England, even though continental Europe creeps in far more often than one would expect from the title of the book. Rosser has much to say about especially Italy and this comparative dimension certainly adds to the richness of the book and helps set the English material in perspective, even if explicit comparisons are seldom made. The broadening is very much in the extensive inclusion of all sorts of guilds; this is not a book about workers alone, but about everyone involved in guild activities in late...