First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperial zenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The nineetenth century was a period of striking developments, and subject to a great pressure of change. This process of change is the primary focus of the book. Organised into a series of thematic chapters, Black and MacRaild's wide-ranging text offers the reader an analysis of numerous spheres of human history: politics, empire and warfare; economy, society and population; religion and culture. The book also offers considered treatment of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with a truly British (as opposed to English) perspective maintained throughout. With numerous illustrations, helpful explanatory tables, boxes and textual inserts, as well as a list of further reading with each chapter, Ninteetenth Century Britain is an excellent introductory text book for students of this most vital period in British history.

This book seeks to map the cultural history of nineteenth-century British society in light of the extraordinary transformations it went through. The transition of Britain from an industrializing but still predominantly agricultural society, with many of its traditional, vertically organized forms of social organization still intact, to a predominantly urban, class-divided and recognizably modern society remains one of the striking transformations of social history. The simultaneous transformation of Britain from one imperial power among others to the most powerful imperium in history is equally important. The author also explores some of the social and cultural changes which accompanied the economic and political ones: the transition from minority literacy to mass literacy; from an oligarchical social order to one with some genuine democratic features; from a time when women were being excluded from the public labor market to the age of the New Woman.

This highly original synthesis is a clear and stimulating assessment of nineteenth-century British women. It aims to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the key historiographical debates and issues, placing particular emphasis upon recent, revisionist research. The book highlights not merely the ideologies and economic circumstances which shaped women's lives, but highlights the sheer diversity of women's own experiences and identities. In so doing, it presents a positive but nuanced interpretation of women's roles within their own families and communities, as well as stressing women's enormous contribution to the making of contemporary British culture and society.

The 'bonds of matrimony' describes with cruel precision the social and political status of married women in the nineteenth century. Women of all classes had only the most limited rights of possession in their own bodies and property yet, as this remarkable book shows, women of all classes found room to manoeuvre within the narrow limits imposed on them. Upper-class women frequently circumvented the onerous limitations of the law, while middle-class women sought through reform to change their legal status. For working-class women, such legal changes were irrelevant, but they too found ways to ameliorate their position. Joan Perkin demonstrates clearly in this outstanding book, full of human insights, that women were not content to remain inferior or subservient to men.

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperial zenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.