Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England. Susan North. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xiv + 342 pp. £70

[...]chapter 2's treatment of “Manners and Health” reminds us from the outset that underlying all principles of cleanliness in early modern literature was the connection to baptism and its washing away the physical dirt of the body with the spiritual ablution of sins. “Clothing and Disease” (chapter 3) describes the role of fabric (clothes, bedding) in spreading disease: plague literature dating as far back as 1348 held that clothing and textiles spread the disease, and prescribed clean linen, in particular, as a means to prevent it. Evidence from inventories, household accounts and manuals, and surviving linen garments tracks underclothes through their life cycle of production—making, wearing, laundering, and final recycling.