The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfillment in Early Modern England

That question was no less urgent for English men and women who lived between the early sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries than for this book's readers.

Keith Thomas's masterly exploration of the ways in which people sought to lead fulfilling lives in the period between the beginning of the Reformation and the heyday of the Enlightenment illuminates the central values of the age, while casting incidental light on some of the perennial problems of human existence.