This book was first published in 1989. In this extensive analysis of the urban trades of eighteenth-century France, the foundations are laid for comparative studies of the workshop economy in modern European history. The work combines intellectual and institutional history with the economic and social history of the trades.

First published in 1989, this paperback edition of Work and Wages comes with a new Preface, entitled 'Fashion's Empire', that positions the book's argument within the broader context of historical thinking about eighteenth-century France and the origins of the French revolution. It also comes with an updated set of bibliographical notes linking recent historical writing on industry before industrialisation to the picture of the eighteenth-century French trades presented in Work and Wages. Together, they add up to a fresh way in to one of the books that has changed the direction of historical thinking about artisans, small businesses and the political economy of eighteenth-century France.