Steven King is Professor of Economic and Social History at Leicester University, UK.

• 1. Introduction: Narratives and new understanding of the experience of the sick poor Steven King; 2. Labouring on a bed of sickness: The material and rhetorical deployment of ill-health in Englishmen's pauper letters 1780-1840 Alannah Tomkins; 3. Sickness and security: Negotiations over medical relief in Essex pauper letters and overseers' correspondence, 1800-1834 Thomas Sokoll and Tanja Kleinsorge; 4. "My state of great affliction you will no from my last letter": Rhetorics of sickness in the letters of English, Welsh and Scottish serial letter writers, 1820-70 Steven King; 5. Poverty and epidemics: Narratives on the poor at times of Cholera in Germany and Spain, 1830s-1860s Beatte Althammer; 6. The 'trials of life': Asylum records as pauper and sickness narratives in England 1840-1870 Cathy Smith; 7. Stories of care and coercion: Narratives of poverty and suffering among patients with venereal disease in Sweden 1860-1920 Anna Lundberg; 8. Galway workhouse scandals: Pauper bodies, narratives of sickness and the Galway School of Anatomy, Ireland, 1832-1921 Ina Scherder; Migrant, friendless and unsettled: Sickness narratives from the migrant poor of England, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland 1860-1938 Jean-Paul Lerner; 10. From long-term unemployment to ill-health and poverty: The narratives of the sick unemployed in Trier and surroundings during the 1920s and 1930s Tamara Stazic; 11. The European sick poor 1780-1938: A reflection on common experiences, strategies and rhetorics Steven King and Andreas Gestrich.

Assembled by three distinguished historians of poverty this volume consists of an introduction and ten essays, mostly focussing on Britain and Germany (three chapters each) but also including chapters on Ireland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden ... anyone with a research interest in this field will find plenty of food for thought ... there is much of value here, therefore, and the volume’s production in reasonably priced paperback format brings it within the ordinary scholar’s reach.