The Industrial Revolution and British Society is an original and wide-ranging textbook survey of the principal economic and social aspects of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. The distinguished international team of contributors each focus on topics at the very centre of scholarly interest, and draw together the prevailing research in an accessible and stimulating manner: the intention throughout is to introduce a broad student readership to important, but less familiar aspects and consequences of the first Industrial Revolution. A variety of different disciplinary skills are employed in the analysis of empirical and conceptual data, and each chapter opens up its subject with indications for further reading. The Industrial Revolution and British Society offers a topical overview on perspectives of this central historical problem, and will be widely used as a course text by teachers in the field.

‘It is a wide-ranging survey of the principal economic and social aspects of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The eleven chapters range widely over modern conceptions of the Industrial Revolution, through a consideration of women in the workforce, religion and political stability and sex and desire to politics, crime and social aspects of that revolutionary period. Valuable bibliographies are appended to each chapter. The papers are invariably well written and stimulating, raising questions of historiography and methodology that students above 13 are perfectly capable of understanding.’

Richard Brown Source: Teaching History

‘This is an essential … extremely useful handbook for anyone doing work on this period.’

Source: Open History