Annotation: The five-volume series, A History of Private Life, is a comprehensive study undertaken in the 1980s by a group of French, British, and American scholars under the direction of two renowned historians of the Annales School of historiography—Philippe Aries and Georges Duby. The series covers the history of the West from antiquity to the end of the 20th century. In this second volume of the series, private life in Europe during the High Middle Ages is examined. The authors show how family life and social order changed by comparison with antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. They also discuss how complex legal structures correlated to everyday life, how the European “individual” emerged onto the scene, and how private life began to be represented in literature.