A nostalgic look back at the county's pottery industry with first-hand accounts, anecdotes and stories. Includes chapters on Bottle Ovens, Life in a Pottery town, Smoky Stoke and Potbank Humour.

An easy-to-use reference for those looking to trace English ancestry connected to the North Staffordshire pottery industry. Tracing Your Potteries Ancestors introduces readers to the wealth of information available to those wishing to trace their North Staffordshire roots. Michael Sharpe gives a fascinating insight into the history of this part of the Midlands, which was for so long dominated by the pottery industry. The six pottery towns—Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton, and Longton—are at the heart of the story. His handbook is an essential guide for anyone researching the life of an individual or family connected with the area, bringing together all the relevant local and national archives for the first time. In a series of short, information-packed chapters, it describes the lives and experiences of ordinary people in this most extraordinary of landscapes. It charts the transition of the Six Towns from scattered farming communities to a thriving industrial conurbation. The living conditions of the urban poor, health and welfare, the influence of religion and migration, education, leisure pursuits, and the traumatic experience of war are all explored, and the many different archives and sources that are open to family history researchers are explained. “Impressively researched, expertly written, deftly organized and presented, Tracing Your Potteries Ancestors: A Guide for Family & Local Historians is an extraordinarily informative and thoroughly reader-friendly resource.” —Midwest Book Review

Stoke-on-Trent was the name given to the amalgamation of six famous Potteries towns, the other five being Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton and Tunstall. This book deals with the entire City, illustrating its wide variety of industries and the way of life of the people in the past. The world-wide reputation of Stoke was secured by the products of the pottery manufacturers. The innovations of men like Josiah Wedgwood, Josiah Spode and the Adams family - who had been making pots since the 15th century - built up a world-beating industry. The author vividly records much of the characteristic Potteries scene, of bottle-kilns, pit-heads and workers' cottages; and of the workers themselves, as they earned their living or enjoyed their recreations. Arnold Bennett, the City's literary giant, would have loved this book.

This anthology brings together for the first time a collection of autobiographical accounts of their childhood by a range of prominent nineteenth-century literary women. These are strongly individualised descriptions by women who breached the cultural prohibitions against self writing, especially in the attention given to psychologically formative incidents and memories. Several offer detailed accounts of their inadequate schooling and their keen hunger for knowledge: others give new insights into the dynamics of Victorian family life, especially relationships with parents and siblings, the games they invented, and their sense of being misunderstood. Most contributors vividly describe their fears and fantasies, together with obsessive religious practices, and the development of an inner life as a survival strategy. This collection makes vital out-of-print material available to scholars working in the field of women’s autobiography, the history of childhood, and Victorian literature. The volume will also appeal to general readers interested in biography, autobiography, the history of family life, education, and women’s writing: read alongside Victorian women’s novels it offers an intriguing commentary on some of their key themes.

Vol. for 1867 includes Illustrated catalogue of the Paris Universal Exhibition.