Elmdon is a social history of a village in north-west Essex between 1861 and 1964. Throughout this period the population of Elmdon, which lies only fifty miles from London, was comparatively small, and this has enabled Jean Robin to follow the lives of individuals and families in the village in a degree of detail which can illuminate many areas not always thoroughly explored. Using the records, electoral rolls and other written sources, as well as information obtained through anthropological techniques of interviewing, carried out between 1962 and 1972 by students from the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of' Cambridge, she examines patterns of land-ownership, employment, marriage, social mobility and migration, and analyses the effects of both local and national events on the lives of Elmdon's inhabitants over a hundred-year period.