Animal Sleep and the 'Age of Improvement', c.1500-1750

This paper examines manuscript and printed farming diaries and veterinary recipes to examine practices relating to animal sleep in early modern agriculture c. 1500-1750. I consider how physiological understandings of animal sleep, the ecological profiles of particular farming regions, and economic imperatives combined to shape a complex culture of animal sleep-care practices in the so-called ‘Age of Improvement’.

Sasha Handley is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Manchester. She has published widely on themes relating to material culture, early modern health and medicine (especially sleep), and supernatural beliefs. Her monographs include 'Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-Century England’ (2007) and ’Sleep in Early Modern England’ (2016).

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