Rosamond Faith is author of The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (1997) and co-author, with Debby Banham, of Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming (2014). Her research has focused on peasant families and farms in medieval Provence and England, and on the nature of lordship, peasant resistance and how medieval people managed the different landscapes they lived in.

• 1. Introduction: the moral economy; Part I. Rank: 2. Lordship; 3. Our island story; 4. Honour and respect in peasant society; Part II. Reciprocity: 5. Hospitality; 6. Hearth, household and farm; Part III. Reputation and Witness: 7. Neighbours and strangers; 8. Markets and marketing; Part IV. The Wolf Sniffs the Wind: 9. HWILOM WÆS: Archbishop Wulfstan's old social order; 10. Land, law and office; Part V. The Aftermath of Conquest: 11. New words in the countryside; 12. Narrating the new social order; Part VI. In the World of the Manor: 13. Establishing custom; 14. Thinking feudally; 15. From rank to class; 16. Conclusion: forward into the past; Appendix. The family farm in peasant studies; Bibliography; Index.

'In the third of a sequence of magisterial and thought provoking books about early English rural society, Rosamond Faith forces us to face the problem of how lordship managed to establish itself in Anglo-Saxon England at all. Her profound and radical understanding of how peasant life works on the ground shines through at every point. Everyone who is interested in English society before 1200, or indeed later, will have to read this book.' Chris Wickham, University of Oxford