Autumn: Debt, the Dead, and the Harvest

The turnip lantern came before the pumpkin. The soul caker's bag came before the trick-or-treat bucket. Behind every familiar autumn custom lies an older object — stranger, harder to carve, and embedded in a system of debts the modern season has quietly forgotten. This book traces autumn's material culture across the British Isles and beyond, from Michaelmas hiring fairs and apple divination to Ob...