Factory Lives contains four works of great importance in the field of nineteenth-century working-class autobiography: John Brown’s A Memoir of Robert Blincoe; William Dodd’s A Narrative of the Experience and Sufferings of William Dodd; Ellen Johnston’s “Autobiography”; and James Myles’s Chapters in the Life of a Dundee Factory Boy. This Broadview edition also includes a remarkably rich selection of historical documents that provide context for these works. Appendices include contemporary responses to the autobiographies, debates on factory legislation, transcripts of testimony given before parliamentary committees on child labour, and excerpts from literary works on factory life by Harriet Martineau, Frances Trollope, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, among others.

DIVThis remarkable book looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class. The Industrial Revolution brought not simply misery and poverty. On the contrary, Griffin shows how it raised incomes, improved literacy, and offered exciting opportunities for political action. For many, this was a period of new, and much valued, sexual and cultural freedom./divDIV /divDIVThis rich personal account focuses on the social impact of the Industrial Revolution, rather than its economic and political histories. In the tradition of best-selling books by Liza Picard, Judith Flanders, and Jerry White, Griffin gets under the skin of the period and creates a cast of colorful characters, including factory workers, miners, shoemakers, carpenters, servants, and farm laborers./div

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The overlooked story of how ordinary women and their husbands managed financially in the Victorian era – and why so many struggled despite increasing national prosperityNineteenth century Britain saw remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation’s wealth. Unable to earn a sufficient income themselves, working-class women were reliant on the ‘breadwinner wage’ of their husbands. When income failed, or was denied or squandered by errant men, families could be plunged into desperate poverty from which there was no escape.Emma Griffin unlocks the homes of Victorian England to examine the lives – and finances – of the people who lived there. Drawing on over 600 working-class autobiographies, including more than 200 written by women, Bread Winner changes our understanding of daily life in Victorian Britain.

For working-class life writers in nineteenth century Britain, happiness was a multifaceted emotion: a concept that could describe experiences of hedonic pleasure, foster and deepen social relationships, drive individuals to self-improvement, and lead them to look back over their lives and evaluate whether they were well-lived. However, not all working-class autobiographers shared the same concepts or valorizations of happiness, as variables such as geography, gender, political affiliation, and social and economic mobility often influenced the way they defined and experienced their emotional lives. The Happiness of the British Working Class employs and analyzes over 350 autobiographies of individuals in England, Scotland, and Ireland to explore the sources of happiness of British working people born before 1870. Drawing from careful examinations of their personal narratives, Jamie L. Bronstein investigates the ways in which working people thought about the good life as seen through their experiences with family and friends, rewarding work, interaction with the natural world, science and creativity, political causes and religious commitments, and physical and economic struggles. Informed by the history of emotions and the philosophical and social-scientific literature on happiness, this book reflects broadly on the industrial-era working-class experience in an era of immense social and economic change.

First Published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.