Compelling street photography from Manchester and Salford during the slum clearances of the 60s

Manchester is one the world's most iconic cities. Not only was it the first industrial city, it can claim to be the first post-industrial city. This book uses historic maps and unpublished and original plans to chart the dramatic growth and transformation of Manchester as it grew rich on its cotton trade from the late 18th century, experienced periods of boom and bust through the Victorian period, and began its post-industrial transformation in the 20th century. The Peterloo Massacre, the Bridgewater Canal, the railway revolution, Trafford Park industrial estate, the Ship Canal, Belle Vue theme park, Wythenshawe garden city, the 1996 IRA bomb, Coronation Street, iconic football stadiums, and MediaCity are just some of the events and places that have put Manchester on the world's perceptual map and are explored through a wealth of published and unpublished maps and plans in this sumptuously illustrated cartographic history.

Throughout the sixties and early seventies Shirley Baker spent many days wandering the streets of Manchester and Salford, taking photographs of children at play, women out shopping, old men on street corners. Her pictures capture the character of a whole way of life which was just then disappearing: a street world caught in late afternoon light, at the end of an era. Her astonishing colour and black and white photographs were first shown in the highly acclaimed Images of Salford exhibition at Salford Art Gallery.

Susan Whyman draws on a hidden world of previously unknown letter writers to explore bold new ideas about the history of writing, reading and the novel. Capturing actual dialogues of people discussing subjects as diverse as marriage, poverty, poetry, and the emotional lives of servants, The Pen and the People will be enjoyed by everyone interested in history, literature, and the intimate experiences of ordinary people. Based on over thirty-five previously unknown letter collections, it tells the stories of workers and the middling sort - a Yorkshire bridle maker, a female domestic servant, a Derbyshire wheelwright, an untrained woman writing poetry and short stories, as well as merchants and their families. Their ordinary backgrounds and extraordinary writings challenge accepted views that popular literacy was rare in England before 1800. This democratization of letter writing could never have occurred without the development of the Royal Mail. Drawing on new information gleaned from personal letters, Whyman reveals how the Post Office had altered the rhythms of daily life long before the nineteenth century. As the pen, the post, and the people became increasingly connected, so too were eighteenth-century society and culture slowly and subtly transformed.