"Society in Early Modern England is a major work that will command the attention of all scholars and students interested in the period. Phil Withington reveals time and again that he is an adept thinker and careful reader, as well as a first-rate historian, as eager to struggle with conceptual problems as to analyzes (?) complicated source material. This book will force many to rethink their understanding of the early modern period and what it means, as well as the ways in which we imagine and categorize historical periods in general."
-Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex

"Withington offers a broad geneaology of historians' use of the term "early modern", and finds striking similarities with the ways that early moderns themselves had begun to describe their world. It is a notably fresh, wide-ranging and stimulating argument about the analytic value of the term and the distinctiveness of early modern society."
-Mike Braddick, University of Sheffield

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marked a period of intense and formative historical change, so much so that they are often described as 'early modern' - an epoch connecting 'the medieval' and 'the modern'. Paying particular attention to England, this book examines the history of this categorization and its implications for contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and society.

The book traces the coinage of 'early modern' as a category of historical analysis to Victoriandebates about the origins of modern society. It then moves back in time to consider when, why and by who words like 'modern' and 'society' were first introduced into English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In so doing it unpicks the connections between linguistic and social change and how the consequences of those processes still resonate today.

A major contribution to our understanding of European history before 1700, the book will interest anybody concerned with the historical antecedents of contemporary culture and the interconnections between the past and the present.