The Great Famine of 1315-1317

by ParfaitPotential9132

Hello! First time posting.

Currently writing a screenplay that takes place during the Great Famine in Europe during 1315-1317. I’ve been searching for educational reading on this event but keep coming up short. Any suggestions?

mikedash

A reasonably up to date general study, which would make a good starting place for research, is William Chester Jordan, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early 14th Century (1996). This has a bibliography running to 40 pages which would help direct further research, but other key works you should definitely consult include:

B.M.S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: essays in the crisis of the early fourteenth century (1991)

B. M. S. Campbell, ‘The agrarian problem in the early fourteenth century’, Past and Present, 188 (2005)

C. Dyer, Standards of living in the later middle ages (Cambridge, 1988)

Ian Kershaw, ‘The great famine and agrarian crisis in England 1315-1322’, Past and Present 59 (1973)

J. Marvin, ‘Cannibalism as an aspect of famine in two English chronicles’, in M. Carlin and J.T. Rosenthal, eds, Food and eating in medieval Europe (1998)

Hergrim

Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.

Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.

For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.