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This series comprises contemporary or near-contemporary accounts of the political, economic and social history of the British Isles during the nineteenth century. It includes material on international diplomacy and trade, labour relations and the women's movement, developments in education and social welfare, religious emancipation, the justice system and special events including the Great Exhibition of 1851.

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240 results in Cambridge Library Collection - British and Irish History, 19th Century

Page 11 of 12

The English Peasant
  • Studies: Historical, Local, and Biographic
  • Richard Heath
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    13 January 2011
    First published in:
    1893
  • Richard Heath, about whom very little is known, travelled around England, and wrote a series of essays on agricultural workers, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when rural life and agriculture were undergoing great changes. The English Peasant was published in book form in 1893. It begins with an outline history of peasant life, which presents a very depressing picture. Agricultural workers' housing may have been picturesque but was primitive in the extreme, and enclosure of common land had worsened their lot, especially in the south and west of England. Heath gives graphic pictures of the conditions in which peasant families lived and worked, dwelling especially on the high figures for infant mortality. He was understandably shocked that a Christian country could let its workers live like this, but hoped that the foundation of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union in 1872 would result in improvements in the workers' condition.

Reflections on the Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain
  • J. A. Cramb
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    02 December 2010
    First published in:
    1900
  • John Adam Cramb (1862–1913) was a Scottish historian and novelist, best known for his fervent patriotism and support of compulsory national service. After graduating from the University of Glasgow in 1885, he served as Lecturer in Modern History at Queen Margaret College, Glasgow, between 1885–1890 and was appointed Professor of Modern History at Queen's College, London, in 1893. This volume, first published in 1900, contains Cramb's assessment of the future of the British Empire. A fervent patriot who was writing in response to the Second Boer War in South Africa, Cramb uses historical examples of British wars to justify the Second Boer War, arguing that the mission of the British Empire was to spread democratic ideals. Cramb warns of the threat of foreign powers to the Empire and recommends compulsory military training to combat this threat. This volume provides a valuable example of Edwardian imperialist and nationalist thought.

Conversations on Political Economy
  • In Which the Elements of that Science are Familiarly Explained
  • Jane Haldimand Marcet
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    19 August 2010
    First published in:
    1816
  • Published at a pivotal moment in the economic development of Britain, Conversations on Political Economy (1816) influenced a generation of economists, politicians and intellectuals. Employing her trademark format of dialogues between Mrs. Bryan and her pupil Caroline, Marcet introduces readers to theories surrounding property, population, and the 'condition of the poor'. Despite a target audience of young women, there is little evidence of feminine sentimentality, nor does the author's commitment to female education prevent her from propounding challenging, often controversial arguments; an approach which won her admiration. As one of her avid readers, Anne Romilly wrote, 'those, who like me know very little … are delighted with the knowledge they have acquired'. In fact, the first edition was so well received that a second was called for before the author had time to make corrections. Marcet had become, as one of her obituarists later put it, the 'instructress of a generation'.

Political and Literary Essays, 1908–1913
  • Evelyn Baring
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010
    First published in:
    1913
  • Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (1841–1917), was a British statesman and colonial administrator. After a successful career in the War Office he was appointed the Controller General of Egypt in 1879. After the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, Baring became Consul General of Egypt, a position he held until 1907 when he resigned due to ill health. During his retirement, he maintained his interest in politics and contemporary culture. This volume, first published in 1913, contains a collection of articles written for magazines such as the Edinburgh Review and the Spectator between 1908 and 1913, on the topics of contemporary politics and literary culture. Baring discusses various subjects including Army reform, the contemporary systems of colonial government, and the future of Classics in education and historiography. This volume provides information on Edwardian views of imperialism, and also illustrates the types of popular articles which were published during this period.

Memoirs of Baron Stockmar
  • Volume 1
  • Ernst Alfred Christian Stockmar
  • Edited by F. Max Müller
  • Translated by Georgina Adelaide Müller
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    27 January 2011
    First published in:
    1872
  • Christian Friedrich Baron Stockmar (1787–1863) was physician and advisor to Prince Leopold, son-in-law of George IV and later King of the Belgians. He was influential in promoting the marriage of Leopold's nephew Prince Albert to Queen Victoria, and became a trusted advisor to them both. His involvement in English politics was often seen as German interference in English matters, while in Germany he was regarded as an English spy. These two volumes of his papers, selected by his son Ernst, were published in both German and English in 1872, and displeased Queen Victoria by its revelations about clashes between Lord Palmerston and the Prince Consort. Volume 1 covers the period 1814–1838, including significant events in European politics such as treaties, dynastic marriages, the accession of Leopold to the Belgian throne, the preparations for Victoria's accession to the throne and the plans for her marriage to Prince Albert.

The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844
  • With Preface Written in 1892
  • Friedrich Engels
  • Translated by Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    23 December 2010
    First published in:
    1892
  • Frederich Engels (1820–1895) was a German businessman and political theorist renowned as one of the intellectual founders of communism. In 1842 Engels was sent to Manchester to oversee his father's textile business, and he lived in the city until 1844. This volume, first published in German in 1845, contains his classic and highly influential account of working-class life in Manchester at the height of its industrial supremacy. Engels' highly detailed descriptions of urban conditions and contrasts between the different classes in Manchester were informed from both his own observations and his contacts with local labour activists and Chartists. Extensively researched and written with sympathy for the working class, this volume is one Engels' best known works and remains a vivid portrait of contemporary urban England. This volume is reissued from the English edition of 1892, which was translated by noted social activist Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky (1859–1932).

Essays on the Pursuits of Women
  • Also, a Paper on Female Education
  • Frances Power Cobbe
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    16 September 2010
    First published in:
    1863
  • Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) was an Irish writer, social reformer and activist best known for her contributions to Victorian feminism and women's suffrage. After the death of her father in 1857, Cobbe travelled extensively across Europe before becoming a leader-writer addressing public issues for the London newspaper The Echo in 1868. She continued to publish on the topics of feminism, social problems and theology for the rest of her life. This volume, first published in 1863, contains a series of essays discussing topics of importance to early feminists. Cobbe explores sexual and matrimonial inequality and the changing status of and opportunities for single women, and advocates greater and more extensive female education. Cobbe also discusses possible reasons behind the inequality and limitations experienced by singe and married women, providing insights into the lives experienced by Victorian women and exemplifying the ideas and concerns of contemporary feminists.

Harriet Martineau's Autobiography
  • Volume 1
  • Harriet Martineau, Maria Weston Chapman
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010
    First published in:
    1877
  • Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a British writer who was one of the first social theorists to examine all aspects of a society, including class, religion, national character and the status of women. These volumes, first published in 1877, contain Martineau's unusual autobiography. Written in three months in 1855 when she believed herself to be dying of heart disease, the original two volumes remained unaltered despite her recovery and continued writing. The third volume, covering the remainder of Martineau's life, was written by her friend and literary executor, Maria Chapman, who had access to Martineau's private papers. These works were the first substantial published account of Martineau's life and work, and remain a remarkable example of the genre for Martineau's vivid descriptions and candid, outspoken opinions of Victorian society. Volume 1 covers her life until 1834. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=martha

Prisons and Prisoners
  • Some Personal Experiences
  • Constance Lytton
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    17 February 2011
    First published in:
    1914
  • Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton (1869–1923), granddaughter of writer Edward Bulwer Lytton, became a passionate and militant suffragette after visiting imprisoned activists in 1905. She was arrested twice in 1909, on one occasion for throwing stones at a ministerial car, but was soon released. In 1910, to test whether the treatment of women prisoners differed depending on their class, she created a working-class alter ego, Jane Warton, for a protest in Liverpool. Under that name she was imprisoned and participated in a hunger strike that led to her being force-fed eight times, permanently damaging her health. This account of her experiences, first published in 1914, is a moving insight into the experiences of women who risked their lives and endured great suffering to secure the right to vote. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=lyttco

Progress and Poverty
  • An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth; The Remedy
  • Henry George
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1881
  • Henry George (1839–97) was an American journalist and newspaper editor. In Progress and Poverty, his most famous work (1879), he seeks to explain the apparent paradox that the gulf between rich and poor in a developed city (or nation) is much less that that in a less developed community: 'Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege.' His economic ideas were widely debated, and this volume also contains a response to the 1881 English edition of the book from Isaac B. Cooke, a cotton broker from Liverpool, and Andrew Mearns's The Bitter Cry of Outcast London (1883), a short but telling description of the reality of the poverty then to be found in the world's richest city.

Harriet Martineau's Autobiography
  • Volume 2
  • Harriet Martineau, Maria Weston Chapman
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010
    First published in:
    1877
  • Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a British writer who was one of the first social theorists to examine all aspects of a society, including class, religion, national character and the status of women. These volumes, first published in 1877, contain Martineau's unusual autobiography. Written in three months in 1855 when she believed herself to be dying, the original two volumes remained unaltered despite her recovery and continued writing. The third volume, covering the remainder of Martineau's life, was written by her friend and literary executor, Maria Chapman, who had access to Martineau's private papers. These works were the first substantial published account of Martineau's life and work, and remain a remarkable example of the genre for Martineau's vivid descriptions and candid, outspoken opinions of Victorian society. Volume 2 covers her life from 1834 to 1855. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=martha

Scenes from a Silent World
  • Or, Prisons and their Inmates
  • Felicia Skene
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010
    First published in:
    1889
  • Francis Scougal was one of the pseudonyms of Felicia Skene (1821–1899), a writer and philanthropist, who also wrote fiction and religious works. She was particularly noted for her work with 'fallen women' and in the campaign for penal reform. This 1889 work was the result of ten years prison-visiting at Oxford Gaol. She argues for greater emphasis on rehabilitation of prisoners: they will be bound to re-offend if they are treated inhumanly while imprisoned and as outcasts when released. She argues against mandatory sentencing, on the grounds that individual cases cannot be treated identically; and opposes capital punishment, both because miscarriages of justice are bound to occur at times, and also because it does not act as a deterrent. Her non-judgmental account is remarkably modern. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=skenfe

Sketches of the Royal Society and Royal Society Club
  • John Barrow
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    17 February 2011
    First published in:
    1849
  • Sir John Barrow (1764–1848) was a distinguished British government diplomat whose career took him to China and Africa, and who in forty years as Secretary to the Admiralty was responsible for promoting Arctic and Antarctic exploration. A close friend of Sir Joseph Banks, he served on the Council of the Royal Society and as President of the Royal Geographical Society. Sketches of the Royal Society and Royal Society Club was published posthumously in 1849, as a supplement to Barrow's autobiography (also published in this series). It consists of a brief history of the societies, followed by a series of memoirs of presidents of the Royal Society of Barrow's time, and of other leading members of the Society and the Royal Society Club, the elite dining club associated with it. The biographies provide abundant evidence of the central importance of the Royal Society to scientific life in nineteenth-century Britain.

The Life of Isabella Bird
  • Anna M. Stoddart
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    16 June 2011
    First published in:
    1906
  • Isabella Bird (1831–1904) was one of the most famous Victorian female explorers, and the first woman member of the Royal Geographical Society. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for physical and nervous complaints. She toured the United States and Canada, Australasia and the Far East before her marriage to Dr John Bishop in 1881. After his death in 1886 she decided to become a missionary, and travelled to India and little-known parts of the Middle East. She then went to Iraq, China and Morocco. Each of her expeditions produced very successful books, many in the form of letters to her sister, beginning with An Englishwoman in America (1856); most of these are also reissued in this series. This biography by Anna Stoddart, who had known and admired Bird, was published in 1906 and depicts a daring, determined and perceptive woman.

The Broad Stone of Empire
  • Problems of Crown Colony Administration, With Records of Personal Experience
  • Volume 1
  • Charles Bruce
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010
    First published in:
    1910
  • Sir Charles Bruce (1836–1920) was a civil servant and colonial administrator who served for thirty-six years in various administrative and governing roles in Mauritius, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and Guyana. These volumes, first published in 1910, contain Bruce's discussions of the major problems of colonial administration. He provides a detailed survey of the development of national and colonial policy from 1815 to 1868 and imperial policy from 1868 to 1872, illustrating the historical context of late nineteenth-century colonial administration. Bruce then discusses in detail topics of importance to colonial administrators, including Crown law, labour and health, illustrating solutions to problems from his considerable experience. These volumes were intended as a reference work for students of colonial administration, and provide a wealth of information on the organisation and administration of British colonies in the nineteenth century. Volume 1 contains his survey of the development of colonial policy.

A Farmer's Life
  • With a Memoir of the Farmer's Sister
  • George Sturt
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010
    First published in:
    1922
  • George Sturt (1863–1927) was a British wheelwright and writer who usually wrote under the pen-name George Bourne. A native of Surrey, he inherited his father's workshop in the rural village of Bourne, near Farnborough, in 1894. He began to record the daily lives and recollections of his rural family and acquaintances, which he published towards the end of his life. First published in 1922, this volume contains Sturt's unique biography of his uncle, farmer John Smith. Sturt bases his account of his uncle's life around Smith's anecdotes and recollections as recounted him during the last years of Smith's life. This unusual structure provides a lively, intimate account of the life of a farmer in rural England during the nineteenth century. Through Smith's recollections and Sturt's own memories, Sturt sensitively describes the domestic life, work and farming methods of a now vanished way of life.

Homes of the London Poor
  • Octavia Hill
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    23 December 2010
    First published in:
    1875
  • Octavia Hill (1838–1912) is today best remembered as one of the founders of the National Trust. However, her involvement in education and social reform, and particularly housing, was a large part of her work. Shocked at the poverty and overcrowding she found in London slums, she began to acquire and improve properties which would restore the tenants' dignity and self-respect. She organised a team of volunteer 'district visitors' to help the residents, and especially children, to achieve a better quality of life, including recreational amenities. These articles, dating from 1866 to 1875, show the development of her thinking on how to achieve reforms by a mixture of legislation and charity. As the number of properties and helpers grew considerably, she argued that the personal involvement of volunteers achieved more than a larger bureaucracy could. Her work, which was internationally recognised, led to the development of housing associations.

The Empire: A Series of Letters
  • Published in 'The Daily News', 1862, 1863
  • Goldwin Smith
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010
    First published in:
    1863
  • Goldwin Smith (1823–1910) was a British historian and journalist. After studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, Smith became a leading advocate of university reform before being appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in 1858. He resigned his position in 1866, and spent two years lecturing at Cornell University before moving to Toronto following his marriage in 1875. He was considered by contemporaries a leading proponent of left-wing intellectual radicalism. This volume, first published in 1863, contains a collection of letters written by Smith concerning British colonial interests. He was a staunch anti-imperialist, and the letters examine colonial emancipation, government, trade, and British relations with Canada, New Zealand and Gibraltar, from this political view, urging the cessation of British colonial expansion. This volume provides valuable insights into the views and political beliefs of late nineteenth-century British anti-imperialists.

Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, from 1848 to 1861
  • Queen Victoria
  • Edited by Arthur Helps
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010
    First published in:
    1868
  • The publication of Queen Victoria's journals in 1858 made her a best-selling author almost immediately. Dedicated to her late husband, Victoria's diary entries detail her Highland holidays at Balmoral in Aberdeenshire, frequented by the royal family since 1848. Writing of mountain adventures, boating, and other outdoor activities, the Queen portrays an idyllic family life far away from the politics and prying eyes of the London public. Her Highland exploits are supplemented with accounts of travels in England and Ireland and yachting expeditions. As Victoria had retreated from public life following the death of Albert, the publication of her journals gave the public access to their monarch in a different form, and the popularity of this book resulted in the subsequent publication, More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands in 1884. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=victqu

The Expansion of England
  • Two Courses of Lectures
  • John Robert Seeley
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    25 November 2010
    First published in:
    1883
  • J. R. Seeley (1834–1895) was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. He was concerned that classics and the study of the distant past were far too dominant at the university, and believed that the academic study of contemporary history could provide a moral and intellectual foundation for modern political life. The Expansion of England, first published in 1883 and based on his lectures, was his most successful book, remaining in print for over seventy years. He believed that the purpose of the study of history was to see patterns and tendencies which could be used to make predictions about the future. Foreseeing the rise of America and Russia as world powers, he wanted to ensure that the British Empire retained its position of dominance in the twentieth century, which he saw as its destiny. His clear arguments, and skill in writing often-quoted epigrams, ensured the book's continued popularity.

Page 11 of 12