This book comprises selected papers presented at two meetings of the Leeds Symposium on Food History which were devoted to the matter of food and food supplies in the city of York, from earliest times until the present century. The papers include discussions of the archaeological record; Anne Rycraft on the medieval diet and markets; Peter Brears on York guilds and on shopping in York and its supply of the hinterland; Eileen White on the domestic record of the 16th and 17th centuries; Laura Mason on the diet of the working class in Victorian York and on regional foods; W.B. Taylor on the emergence of the confectionery industry; and Hugh Murray on the 19th-century city and its food supplies. The book is graced with many illustrations. Although there have been some impressive monographs on food supply and the British city, notably Scola’s study of Manchester, this volume has a wider range in time and takes in more aspects of its subject than most. York, of course, was a major regional centre from the Roman period onwards.

Eileen White