First published in 2005. Much has been written about the physical development of the railway system in Britain, the enormous investment of capital involved and the crucial effects on economic and industrial growth in the nineteenth century, but very little has been said about the most important social aspect of this phenomenon. This is a study on the emergence and growth of railway labour, in 1830-1870.
This title looks at every aspect of the railway in Victorian times - from the origins and initial construction to the spreading impact on the nation; from engineers and financiers to the effect on leisure and the environment.
The railway was one of the principal Victorian spaces of reading. This book spotlights one of the leading audience demographics in this late-Victorian market: the newly empowered readers of the expanding middle class. The transactions in which late-Victorian readers acquired the books read whilst travelling are reconstructed by exploring the leading determinants of consumers’ purchasing choices at the railway station bookstalls selling books intended for reading in this zone. This exploration concentrates on the impact of forces like the input of the staff running the bookstalls and the commercial environment in which consumers made their purchases. At the center of this study is a leading (and still relatively under-examined) genre of Victorian print culture circulating in this reading space― the series. Rooney examines three leading examples of late-Victorian series, which sought to satisfy railway passengers’ need for literary reading matter. Many of the period’s principal authors and literary genres featured in their lists. Each venture is representative of one of the three main pricing tiers of series publishing. Employing an eclectic methodological framework combining cultural studies and book history approaches with concepts from the new humanities, the reading experiences furnished by the light fiction of these series are reconstructed. This study reflects the recent growth in scholarship on historical readership, the expansion in the canon of Victorian popular literature, and the broader material turn in nineteenth-century studies.
An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books Monthly, UK). Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK). Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book blends accurate historical details with compelling stories to bring alive the fascinating details of Victorian daily life. It is a must-read for seasoned social history fans, costume drama lovers, history students, and anyone with an interest in the nineteenth century.
Although a great deal has been published on the economic, social and engineering history of nineteenth-century railways, the work of historical geographers has been much less conspicuous. This overview by David Turnock goes a long way towards restoring the balance. It details every important aspect of the railway’s influence on spatial distribution of economic and social change, providing a full account of the nineteenth-century geography of the British Isles seen in the context of the railway. The book reviews and explains the shape of the developing railway network, beginning with the pre-steam railways and connections between existing road and water communications and the new rail lines. The author also discusses the impact of the railways on the patterns of industrial, urban and rural change throughout the century. Throughout, the historical geography of Ireland is treated in equal detail to that of Great Britain.
This is an important contribution to the new urban history, describing and analysing one of the best examples of a company town in nineteenth-century Europe. This archetypal railway town was built on a green-field site by a railway company in 1842-3. It was a major junction, an administrative centre and an important manufacturing centre. Thus it provides an ideal arena in which to study the relationship between company and people and the effects of this claustrophobic association on emerging economic and social structure and politics in the era of large-scale development and modernisation in Europe and America. Dianne Drummond applies the full range of modern urban-historical approaches in this work. It is a shining example of the ways in which new techniques in research, analysis and comparison can redraw the best-known histories. It will be essential reading for urban historians.
This wide-ranging volume collects together twelve of the author’s longer essays, mainly drawn from those first published in the last two decades. Chiefly consisting of micro-studies of a variety of different aspects of early modern English history, the book concerns itself with social and economic change, the period of the English Revolution and its long-lasting impact, with Puritanism, with the family as a social institution, and with historical consciousness and different forms of historical writing. Some of the essays focus on a particular individual, not all well known – William Camden, John Milner, and Ralph Dutton – to open up a broader theme. One boldly attempts a comparison over three centuries of the evolution of local history as a subject on both sides of the Atlantic. Two other essays reach out into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but do so with echoes of the subject matter of some of those dealing with the early modern period. The inter-connectedness of social history, local history, and historiography is stressed and illustrated throughout. Both specialists and non-specialists will find much to interest them in this varied and rewarding volume.
