Editorial

This issue marks a new departure for Past and Present. As subscribers will have noticed, you are receiving the first in our series of Past and Present Supplements with the journal, a volume entitled The Art of Survival: Essays in Honour of Olwen Hufton. This collection is free of charge to all subscribers to the journal.

Why have we done this? For many years we have published the Past and Present Publications series alongside the journal, and this has comprised monographs, translations, conference proceedings and collections of essays. These are tough times for publishers, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to publish collections of essays that we wanted to produce. However, rather than cutting back our publications, we have decided to change instead the way we publish. The book series will continue but will focus on book-length studies. With the agreement of Oxford Journals, we decided to set up in addition a Supplements series that will be a new form of publication, combining the best of journal and book publication. We intend to produce one volume every year, which will be sent out free to subscribers but which can also be purchased individually by non-subscribers. This will also be available on line and will be, like the journal, fully searchable.

The themes of the Supplements will be ones that will relate to the interests of our readers: the first volume brings together ritual, religion, gender history and social history, long familiar themes of the journal; and it honours Olwen Hufton who was a member of the Board of Past and Present from 1978 to 1990. The second volume, which, like the first, originates in a Past and Present conference, celebrates the work of a founder Board member: Rodney Hilton's Middle Ages. This collection will be of interest to non-medievalists and non-specialists alike because of its emphasis on methodology and theory; and its diverse range of subjects. Future volumes will include the papers from the Past and Present conference on magic and superstition. We are very grateful to Oxford University Press for their willingness to try new forms of publication, and we trust that these volumes will create a forum for the kinds of collective development of themes that is not possible in the pages of the journal. And we hope that readers of the journal will welcome the new venture!