Microhistory

The most celebrated works of microhistory are Carlo Ginzberg's The Cheese and the Worms, a difficult but very rewarding, if contentious, exploration of popular belief and the impact of literacy in sixteenth-century Italy[…]

What is certain is that in “The Pattern in the Carpet,” Drabble eschews both chronology and raw autobiographical revelation for a more meandering approach that touches briefly on family pathology and private pain as it crisscrosses the centuries and unfolds the microhistory of jigsaw puzzles, an English invention, circa 1767.