This work investigates the economic and social mechanisms that defined the lives of the impoverished population in France during the decades preceding the French Revolution. Olwen H. Hufton, a distinguished historian of early modern Europe, utilizes extensive archival research to reconstruct the daily survival strategies of the laboring poor. She argues that poverty was not merely a static condition but a complex, shifting state influenced by seasonal labor, demographic pressures, and the limitations of institutional charity. The text provides a rigorous framework for understanding how the most vulnerable segments of French society navigated the precarious economic landscape of the late eighteenth century.

Historians frequently cite this work as a foundational text for understanding the social stratification of pre-revolutionary France. Scholars often highlight the meticulous archival detail and the author's ability to humanize the statistical realities of the period.