ABSTRACT
For readers of this chapter the obvious focus of interest is the author's clear and elegant analysis of the English county town during its Georgian heyday. Six features are highlighted: the town's wide and increasingly varied occupational structure; its role as an inland entrepot; its position as a centre of professional and entrepreneurial activity; leisured gentry life; culture; and craftsmanship. Everitt's exposition of these characteristics reveals the economic diversity that underlay the county towns Hanoverian prosperity, a well-being which contrasts with the difficulties many such centres had experienced at some point in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In reading this piece it is tempting to treat the lengthy introduction only cursorily, and advance rapidly to the meat of the argument about the Georgian town. Everitt demonstrates how important he believes the concepts of region and locality are in understanding the basic features of preindustrial society. In this context he sees town and country as part of an organic regional unit.
