Peter Laslett

Thomas Peter Ruffell Laslett

In 1953, having earlier discovered and begun research into a substantial proportion of the library of John Locke, privately held at a shooting lodge in the Scottish Highlands,^[2] Laslett earned an appointment as a university lecturer in history at Cambridge and was elected a fellow Trinity College; thereafter, his involvement with the BBC declined and in 1960 ended.^[3] He worked with the philanthropist Paul Mellon and various institutions to negotiate the purchase and transfer of the library to the more suitable and accessible environs of the Bodleian in Oxford. He continued work in the history of political theory, arguing (against the accepted account) that Locke's Two Treatises of Government had been written to justify the English Glorious Revolution of 1688–9,^[2] but instead that it was written to justify Whig activity during the Exclusion Crisis remarking that the "Two Treatises is an Exclusion Tract, not a Revolution Pamphlet."^[5] He published an edition of the treatises in 1960,^[3] subsequently reprinted many times, which is now recognised as the definitive account of these pillars of modern liberal democracy.^{[citation needed]} From 1957 he founded and co-edited Philosophy, Politics and Society, a series of collections on political philosophy.^[2]

Laslett took up an entirely different line of historical research from the early 1960s. Trying to understand 17th-century listings of the inhabitants of

Laslett was Reader in Politics and the History of Social Structure at Cambridge University (the title reflecting his own unusual mix of historical interests) from 1966 until retirement in 1983. At this point, his interests turned to the historical understanding and practical betterment of the elderly. Laslett played a pivotal role in founding the University of the Third Age in 1982.

He died on 8 November 2001, aged 85, and was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford, and was survived by his wife, Janet, and two sons. His library of early printed books by and about Filmer, Locke, and political thought (including political economy) was sold by Quaritch in 2006.^{[citation needed]}

Works

• The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age (London, 1965; New York, 1966; 2nd ed., 1971, 3rd ed., 1984; re-issued and updated 2000)
• An Introduction to English Historical Demography: From the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (with David Edward Charles Eversley and Edward Anthony Wrigley, London and New York, 1966)
• Household and Family in Past Time (ed. with the assistance of Richard Wall, Cambridge, 1972)
• Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations: Essays in Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1977)
• Statistical Studies of Historical Social Structure (with Kenneth W. Wachter and Eugene A. Hammel, London, 1978)
• Bastardy and its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism (co-edited with Karla Oosterveen and Richard M. Smith, Cambridge, 1980)
• The World We Have Lost: Further Explored (London, 1983; New York, 1984; 3rd ed., 2000, 4th ed., 2004)
• Family Forms in Historic Europe (edited by Richard Wall in collaboration with Jean Robin, Cambridge, 1983)
• A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age (London, 1989; Cambridge, 1991; 2nd ed., 1996)
• Justice Between Age Groups and Generations (co-edited with James S. Fishkin, New Haven and London, 1992)
• Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age (co-edited with
  David Kertzer
  , Berkeley, 1995)

Also The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure, Essays presented to Peter Laslett on his seventieth birthday (edited by Lloyd Bonfield, Keith Wrightson, Oxford, 1996)

References

Further reading

Wikiquote has quotations related to Peter Laslett.

• Schürer, K. (2003). "Peter Laslett: An Appreciation". Continuity and Change. 18 (1).
  doi:10.1017/S0268416003004491
  .