"These extraordinary photographs, from the eyes of eight very different photographers, remind us of the humanising role of photography..." -- Elizabeth Edwards.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1974, this is not a ‘life’ of the founder of the science of economics, although it opens with a biographical sketch; nor is it an analysis of The Wealth of Nations, although it contains numerous pointed quotations from it. Rather, it is a presentation of Adam Smith against his background of time and place, eighteenth century Britain on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. The first chapter consists of ‘documents’ illustrating life in London: ‘low life’ be it noted, which is not to say that it is all sordidness and debauchery and crime (though there is plenty of that in evidence) but life as it was lived by the ‘lower orders’, whom Adam Smith gratefully recognises as ‘the great body of the people’. The last chapter describes the Scotland that Adam Smith knew – Kirkaldy, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

First Published in 2005. So many books have been written on the Industrial Revolution in Britain that it may be thought that there is hardly room for another. The present volume is an attempt to go some way towards filling what must surely appear to be a somewhat surprising gap in the literature. Its aim and purpose is to enable the men and women—and, let it be said, the children and young people—who lived in and through the Industrial Revolution in this country and who had their part, large or small, in its development and helped to give it direction and impetus, to describe their experiences in their own words. All the documents quoted are original documents, prepared and written and set down in print when the Revolution was actually going on.

First published in 1967 Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age presents a collection of ‘documents’, textual and pictorial, and human, illustrating and describing what the author calls, one of the most vigorous, vital, fertile periods in the history of the modern world. The material has been arranged in eight main chapters most of which have subdivisions. The first chapter has for its subject The Great Exhibition of 1851, and this is followed by life and labour, a series of picturesquely detailed description of London and the great industrial regions. Young England is concerned with the juvenile workers in factory and workshop. Next, we have the longest chapter in the book Queen Victoria's sisters containing number of documents describing the life of women in domestic service, the London dress factories and workshops, pit- banks and brickfields and in agriculture. Closely connected with this is home sweet home and then the chapter on the sanitary idea. Workers Unite! echoes Karl Marx but it has to do with the British working men who founded the modern trade union and cooperative movements. The last chapter talks about prostitutes and her clients and various environments in which the trade was carried on. This is an essential read for students of British history.

First published in 1972, Human Documents of the Lloyd George Era presents the years when Lloyd George was in his prime, and his career in peace and war may be seen as the frame in which the ‘documents’ find their proper place; but the book’s real subject is not Lloyd George, it is the People, with whom he identified himself and spent his long life trying to serve. For the purpose of this book Lloyd George Era is taken as the period from 1905. The early documents enable us to reconstruct a vivid picture of life as it was lived ‘before the war’ by such people as London artisans, Middlesbrough ironworkers, Lancashire factory hands, Northumbrian pit-folk and farm labourers, while extracts from reports of the first ‘Lady Factory Inspectors’ and of the great Royal Commission on the Poor Law highlight the grim situation of the ‘Pauper Host’. With the outbreak of war, the mood changes, as Lloyd George leads the People in a massive war effort on the home front, producing munitions and trying to maintain normal industrial output. A glimpse is given of the various contributions made by women. Out of a vast mass of tiny details a picture emerges of an essentially peace- loving people joining forces to achieve what Lloyd George called ‘the bloodstained stagger’ to victory. This is an essential read for students of British history.