Introduction: Images, Identities, and Imaginations
1: European Wanderers: Origins, Arrivals, and Proscriptions
2: The Rambling Roguey Gypsies of the Early Modern Page
3: Tudor Gypsies Against the Law
4: Gypsies and Counterfeits in Elizabethan England
5: Gypsies in Stuart England
6: The Trials and Travels of Eighteenth-Century Gypsies.
7: Reformers and Enthusiasts in the Early Nineteenth Century
8: Victorian Encounters
9: Travels and Troubles in Modern Britain
10: Lives and Livelihoods
Scholars and Gypsies: A Bibliographical Sketch
Bibliography
Born and educated in England, David Cressy has made his career in
the United States, as a college and university teacher and a
prolific author of studies in social history. His work is driven by
curiosity about the interactions of elite and popular culture,
mainstream and marginal society, and official and unofficial
religion. He is currently George III Professor of British History
Emeritus at Ohio State University, and Research Professor in Arts
and Humanities at
Claremont Graduate University, California. A frequent visitor to
the United Kingdom, he may also be found exploring the beaches and
deserts of the American West.
Gypsies in England from their arrival five centuries ago to recent
times can only be followed through literary sources with various
shades of demonizing or romanticizing agenda, or through legal
records. Both sources are here explored to a groundbreaking extent.
... His re-examination of the widely reported 1753 trial of Mary
Squires is particularly successful in getting behind the
stereotypes to find clues to lived experience.
*Frank Bruce, Times Literary Supplement*
For all the challenges of the subject, Cressy does a good job in
telling his story... Cressy in an academic historian, rather than a
'popular' one. This is reflected in the style which is crisp and
efficient. He avoids the pitfalls of cliche that beset more
sensationalist historical writing. Nonetheless, this is an
accessible book, which gives us a sympathetic narrative of a people
who are very much part of the English story. For that, it is
immensely welcome.
*History Today*
... lively, argumentative, well-rounded, wide-ranging book ... a
well-balanced stance and, although broadly sympathetic, avoids
special pleading. It is a qualitative not a quantitative study ...
Its coverage, both in terms of its five-century chronological sweep
and the breadth of its subject matter, is unquestionably impressive
... With his latest book, this exceedinly prolific historian seems
certain to have yet another success on his hands.
*R.C. Richardson, Times Higher Education*
A brilliantly varied and indeed monumental history... The book,
handsome at 411 pages, considers Gypsies across the ages in
Britain, but not without a generous international, comparative
perspective early on.
*Richard Lofthouse, Quad*
Excellent new book... Wide-ranging and imaginative. It is founded
on solid research and will be essential reading for anybody with a
serious interest in Gypsy history.
*James Sharpe, Literary Review*
In his magnificent book David Cressy shows that it is possible to
mine new meanings from old sources if you're prepared to read
"against the grain".
*Kathryn Hughes, Guardian*
Gypsies have been described as a people without history, but David
Cressy has made sure that this is no longer the case. He traces the
community from first arrival in the 1500s to today's glossy TV
shows and dirty evictions, with a lively eye for personal stories
and a professional richness of documentation.
*Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine*
The source materials the author uses are diverse and extensive; the
bibliography is a goldmine for historians working in Romani Studies
... eminently readable.
*Ann Ostendorf, Romany Studies*
An outstanding study of a much-maligned minority... [Cressy] has
produced a scholarly masterpiece... Gypsies is a work of objective
scholarship. It is also a colossal achievement, gathering thousands
of shreds of evidence from a vast span of sources to trace the
fates of English Gypsies from their first arrival among us until
now... The Council of Europe decreed in 2010 that the word "Gypsy"
must no longer be used, because of its "negative paternalistic
stereotypes". Roma and traveller are acceptable alternatives.
Cressy, however, defintely uses "Gypsy" with a capital G througout,
and his scholarly masterpiece is a lifeline to the true past.
*John Carey*
It is wonderful to have a comprehensive and up-to-date history of
this important and topical subject, by a practised and talented
historian, which does full justice to both its primary records, and
its intrinsic colour and excitement.
*Ronald Hutton*
An immensely readable pantechnicon of Gypsy lore.
*Christina Hardyment*
An important and illuminating account of a marginalized and
itinerant people. Richly detailed, confidently written, and clear
in its central mission, this book will prove to be an important
departure point for all scholars looking to consider histories of
marginal peoples in England and elsewhere.
*David Hitchcock, Journal of British Studies*
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