Richard Arkwright was born in Preston in 1732. He married Patience Holt in 1755 and had a son, Richard, in the same year. After Patience's death in 1756, he married Margaret Biggens in 1761. He passed away in 1792, and was buried at Smelting Mill Green, close to Cromford Bridge.

"Freeman’s rich and ambitious Behemoth depicts a world in retreat that still looms large in the national imagination.…More than an economic history, or a chronicle of architectural feats and labor movements." —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times In an accessible and timely work of scholarship, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the early textile mills that powered the Industrial Revolution to the factory towns of New England to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. Behemoth offers a piercing perspective on how factories have shaped our societies and the challenges we face now.