Leaving England: Essays on British Emigration in the Nineteenth Century.

Leaving England: Essays on British Emigration in the Nineteenth Century is an important book. Charlotte Erickson, Professor of American History Emerita at Cambridge University, has written about immigration from the British Isles throughout her long and productive career. The current volume aptly represents the essence of her research in the field, and it offers new possibilities for future research. It will undoubtedly be welcomed by any number of scholars who want to know more about British immigration history in the nineteenth century.

Erickson's book consists of seven essays written over a period of thirty years (1960-1990) in "an effort to probe the story of English emigration." (p. 15) Although more nineteenth-century overseas settlers came from the British Isles than any other European area, North America's English immigrants have, in the words of the author, "remained largely invisible." The essays in this book are collectively a tonic to remedy this circumstance. Erickson presents her work in such a way as to allow the reader to trace the author's path of exploration in exciting sources - immigrant letters, census manuscripts, county histories, and passenger lists - that make English immigrants not only more visible, but also more understandable. Indeed, in the pages of this volume the social and demographic profile of the English immigrant, especially when compared to Continental counterparts, comes sharply into focus. The author freely admits that at the beginning of her career she paid little attention to immigrant women, "partly because the sources were so scant and partial." She further explains: "When I was asked to say something about women, I found that there were more Englishwomen's voices than I had noticed." (p. xiii) And, I might add, she writes admirably about these immigrant women.

The "Introduction" is one of the strong points of this collection of essays. In it the author offers a succinct, well-written historiographical analysis of the scholarship on immigration studies over the last thirty years that is by turns personal, anecdotal, and scholarly. She also ponders why so few American scholars have shown interest in examining English-born peoples as immigrants; nonetheless, Erickson notes the exception of the colonial period of American history "about which historians have published highly original, in-depth studies," referring to Bernard Bailyn's Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution and David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.

Professor Erickson is a wise and experienced historian who has a sure-footed sense of how her work fits into the overall context of her professional specialty. Some of her colleagues will not like all that she has to say. For example, her assertion that "I have tried to develop a history from below free from preoccupations with the making of a working class and the congealing of class consciousness, social mobility in the raw, or old-fashioned demonstrations of the 'contributions' of immigrants" is sure to displease some social and cultural historians who take their lead from E.P. Thompson and other like-minded scholars. Erickson advances the alternative ideas of integrating migration studies with the mainstream social histories of various European nations, writing descriptive history on the "lifetime careers of migrants," and avoiding what she calls the trap of "ideological assumptions." Her lifetime of study of British immigration serves well as a model for a new generation of historians searching for new directions in their efforts to increase our knowledge and understanding of this neglected field. Leaving England is a fine way for a distinguished scholar to cast a lasting legacy.

Walter T. Howard Bloomsburg University