This broad focus source book brings together a wide range of written and visual sources from all over Europe and includes materials on men, masculinity and women. The collection is organized around two main principles, stages of life and gender, and is divided into eight chapters: childhood, youth and sexuality, courtship and weddings, married life, economic life, networks and communities, and widowhood and old age. The sources address the numerous and varied ways in which women and men's notions of themselves affected their lives, and explores how accepted norms of masculine and feminine behavior influenced social, economic, and religious change. The authors include a wide range of types of documents rarely found in readers, including court cases involving same-sex relationships, Inquisition records regarding blasphemy, bigamy, and abandonment, a midwife's diary, love letters, popular stories, testimonies regarding spousal abuse, and healing spells.

The collection is organized around two main principles, stages of life and gender, and is divided into eight chapters: childhood, youth and sexuality, courtship and weddings, married life, economic life, networks and communities, and widowhood and old age. The sources address the numerous and varied ways in which women and men's notions of themselves affected their lives, and explore how accepted norms of masculine and feminine behaviour influenced social, economic, and religious change. Guided by a general editors' introduction and then an introduction to each chapter, the user will find this an invaluable reference companion to early modern gender history.