Essential in the everyday lives of all societies for providing protection and warmth textiles also fulfill social cultural military legal and symbolic functions and have played a key role in the economic activity of societies from ancient times. This magnificent two-volume study brings together the leading experts on textiles from eight countries ensuring authoritative coverage of the production and uses of textiles in western societies from the earliest times to the present day. With contributions from archaeologists economic and social historians historians of fashion and the history of dress and museum curators no other book offers the breadth of coverage of this one in terms of time period subject matter or approach. The book s range and accessibility will ensure that it is a key reference for specialists and non-specialists alike. David Jenkins is Senior Lecturer in Economic History in the Department of Economics and Related Studies at the University of York. He is also Governor and Company Secretary of the Pasold Research Fund which promotes research and publication in the history of textiles in the eighteenth nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jenkins has a special interest in the wool textile industry where his major contribution is (with the late K.G. Ponting) The British Wool Textile Industry 1880-1914 (Ashgate Publishing Company 1982). For several years Jenkins was a member of Council and Honorary Secretary of the Economic History Society and is a member of the Editorial Board of Textile History.