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The contributors to this volume examine the history of the British middle classes from the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Geography, economy and occupation recur as factors contributing to differentiation between middling social groups. At the same time, the authors explore the significance for social and political behaviour of shared forms of identity, including a range of cultural practices - religion, voluntary activities and local cultural networks, the cultivation of professional status, education and the language of the press - and their organization and institutional forms: churches, schools, newspapers, voluntary and charitable associations and professional bodies. These several accounts raise broader theoretical and historiographical debates, not least about the vexed question of class, which are discussed and contextualized by the editors.
There have been many tales and anecdotes about the Cotswolds published over the past two hundred years, some of which are now virtually inaccessible. This book provides a fine selection of these tales - some amusing, others poignant - covering this corner of the country, revealing something of the unique nature of the region. The text covers a wide variety of subjects and, with much of it written in dialect, vividly captures the texture of life as it was at the end of the nineteenth century. Here are tales of the farmer and the country fir, the shepherd and his idyllic life and the rural wedding, but also of the death of a child and the effects of politics on ordinary people. Here, too, are anecdotes of daily life and characters still strangely familiar despite the passing of the years. In this volume is contained S S. Buckman's John Darke's Sojourn in the Cotteswolds and Elsewhere; Willum Workman's Wit and Wisdom by G. Edmund Hall and John Drinkwater's Cotswold Characters. Illustrated with original line drawings and contemporary photographs of the area, Cotswold Tales will delight visitors and residents alike.
The nineteenth century is too often invoked as moment where Britain alone exerted global dominance, without the need for European collaboration. This book shows how this is fundamentally wrong by exploring British collaboration with France between 1848 and 1914. Gillen redefines our understanding of Britain's role in the world in the age of empire.
The book looks back to traditional ways of life and work that now seem increasingly remote. It includes unforgettable views of the countryside and of farming, and of country crafts and trades like those of the blacksmith and the thatcher. Recalled too are the days before out-of-town supermarkets when coal, milk and groceries were delivered by horse and cart, when high streets were lined with old-fashioned shops and town centres were packed with shoppers and traders on market day. Every aspect of ordinary existence is reflected in the book - work, home, business, leisure, sports, transport, and extraordinary scenes from times of war. And the animals, machines and buildings that played such a large part in country life a century ago are remembered - the windmills, for instance, the horses and the steam railways, the canals and the turnpike roads, the parish churches and chapels that were once the focus of village communities.
Alan Keegan combines many previously unpublished photographs with well-researched captions to create a picture of the Irish community in Manchester: suburbs, people, shops, clubs, buildings, events and entertainment of the past.
Richard III, the most notorious and most discussed of English kings, was also unusual among his contemporaries in regularly signing his books. This characteristic, among others, has enabled Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs to reconstruct his library, and link it to the culture and reading habits of his generation. The books of Richard III are typical of what was available to and popular with the medieval reader – religion, chivalry, history, genealogy, advice on how to govern, romance and prophecy – and allow us to draw an interesting overview of fifteenth-century opinions. Each type of book is examined on its own terms and then related to the known preoccupations of Richard himself, his associates and to the political practices of his time. Containing valuable biographical material, insights into the history and politics of the later fifteenth century, and much detail on late medieval piety and other important aspects of contemporary culture, this fully illustrated survey has wide-ranging significance for all who study the history and literature of the medieval period.
In his pithy introduction Roger Wells examines Burwash's history of notoriety and evaluates Egerton's claims to have 'sanitized' the village during his incumbency with a combination of charity, church and education. The book is illustrated with photographs taken in Burwash around the time of the diaries which aptly complement this evocative account of rural village life.
In this major biography, Catherine Peters explores the complicated life of Wilkie Collins, the greatest of the Victorian "Sensation" novelists and author of the famous Woman in White and The Moonstone. An intimate of Dickens and of the Pre-Raphaelites Holman Hunt and Millais, Collins was called the "king of inventors" by his publisher. On the surface, he was charming, unpretentious, and extremely good company, beloved by men and women. Beneath this façade, however, he was a complex and haunted man, addicted to laudanum, and his powerful, often violent novels revealed a dark side of Victorian life. He supported two common-law wives and their children, and as Peters shows, he provoked scandal...
This is Geoffrey Howard's account of pushing a Chinese wheelbarrow, 2000 miles from Beni Abbes in Algeria, to Kano in Nigeria. He wanted to be the first to cross the Sahara Desert on foot, without the aid of a camel, carrying his food and water. This gripping record of of those gruelling 93 days is alight with humour and peppered with the eccentricities of those he met on the way.Chris Bonington said that it is compulsive reading. Humphrey Carpenter said that it is the most extraordinary contemporary travel book he had ever read.