This collection of essays explore the the Diggers, a group of 17th century men who shared a vision of a society based on collective ownership of the land.

The Diggers shared a collective vision of a common ownership of the land. Among the themes explored in these essays are the power and continuing influence of Winstanley's writings, his ideas on civil liberty, the economic and political background against which the Digger's operated, their treatment at the hands of their opponents, their attitude to women and family, and the role of the Bible in their thinking.

The diggers in their own time, Gerald Aylmer
Gerrard Winstanley: what do we know of his life?, James D.Alsop
Gerrard Winstanley at Cobham, David Taylor
postscipt: William King,
Gerrard Winstanley and Cobham, John Gurney
Gerrard Winstanley and the literature of revolution, Nigel Smith
Winstanley, women and the family, Elaine Hobby
"Furious divells?" The diggers and their opponents, John Gurney
"The consolation
of Israel": representations of Jewishness in the writings of Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, Claire Jowitt
civil liberty in Milton, the Levellers and Winstanley, Warren Chernaik
communism, George Hill and the Mir: was Marx a nineteenth-century Winstanleyan?, James Holstun
the common people and the Bible: Winstanley, Blake and the liberation theology, Christopher Rowland