Hearth tax a baker who, to avoid chimney tax, had knocked through the wall from her oven to her neighbour's chimney. After the Glorious Revolution, the hearth tax was repealed by the newly empowered English Parliament and agreed to by the newly installed William III and Mary II in 1689, as "not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man’s house to be entered into, and searched at pleasure, by persons unknown to him." At the end of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, William III and Mary II also agreed
Shadow on the Hearth -- hence the story's power and darkness". David Seed reports the novel is "universally praised . . . for its understated method, avoidance of melodrama and unusually oblique description of nuclear attack". M. Keith Booker declares that "Shadow on the Hearth" is "a relatively daring novel" and "a useful corrective to the heroic vision of post apocalypse life". Shadow on the Hearth Shadow on the Hearth is a science fiction novel by American writer Judith Merril, originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1950. It was her first novel. A British hardcover was published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1953,