This innovative work of social history is about the burial of the dead, and suggests why it is such an important historical issue. Vanessa Harding focuses on the turbulent worlds of early modern London and Paris, and makes use of rich contemporary documentation to compare and contrast their experience of dealing with the dead, profoundly questioned by the impact of the Reformation. Dr. Harding shows the over-arching importance of place and location, and of an urban social setting in which consumption and display were manifest everywhere, in shaping funeral ritual.