ABSTRACT
An enormous volume of historical writing in recent decades has revitalized the study of the history of charity, a field for long dominated by dewy-eyed sentimentalism, Whiggish certitudes and time-worn antiquarianism. The consequence has been a thickening of the historiographical undergrowth in just about every aspect of the topic and every major period from antiquity to the present; a greater comparativist awareness of spatial difference as, for example, the history of English charity is rethought against Continental example, and indeed against the broader ethnological record; a greater sophistication in the thematics of the field, as charity is inserted within a web of related concepts and practices ranging from poor relief to social control; a greater diversity in frameworks of analysis, from the finely focused microstudy through to broad-brushed comparativist approaches; and a wider range of focus, from the poor and sick for example through to a range of charitable donors and/or “professionals”.1
