This was followed by a series of colourful essays on diverse themes, including time and industrial capitalism, food riots, and wife sales (yes, in the 18th century men really did take their wives to market and "sell" them). After The Making came Whigs & Hunters, a book on the Black Acts – the notorious Georgian legislation that criminalised not only the killing of deer, but also any suspicious activity that might hint at the intention to kill deer. A history of William Morris had appeared in 1955, and had been met with the indifference that is the fate of most academic monographs. Fifty years on, it is still in print, widely revered as a canonical work of social history. In less than a decade, it had gone through a further five reprints. In 1968, Pelican Books bought the rights to The Making and published a revised version as the 1,000th book on their list. The demand for this 800-page doorstop was nothing short of remarkable. EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class became a runaway commercial and critical success. No one could have foreseen the book's reception. Fifty years ago, an obscure historian working in the extra-mural department at the University of Leeds delivered a manuscript, overdue and over-length, to Victor Gollancz – a publishing house then specialising in socialist and internationalist non-fiction.
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