Drawing on the difficult-to-access pamphlets, reports, periodical literature and political tracts, this five-volume set reproduces in facsimile a large number of neglected sources relating to rural life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is of interest to scholars in nineteenth-century studies and to all social historians.

Drawing on the difficult-to-access pamphlets, reports, periodical literature and political tracts, this five-volume set reproduces in facsimile a large number of neglected sources relating to rural life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is of interest to scholars in nineteenth-century studies and to all social historians.

Drawing on the difficult-to-access pamphlets, reports, periodical literature and political tracts, this five-volume set reproduces in facsimile a large number of neglected sources relating to rural life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is of interest to scholars in nineteenth-century studies and to all social historians.

Drawing on the difficult-to-access pamphlets, reports, periodical literature and political tracts, this five-volume set reproduces in facsimile a large number of neglected sources relating to rural life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is of interest to scholars in nineteenth-century studies and to all social historians.

Drawing on the difficult-to-access pamphlets, reports, periodical literature and political tracts, this five-volume set reproduces in facsimile a large number of neglected sources relating to rural life in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is of interest to scholars in nineteenth-century studies and to all social historians.

Barbara Leckie's Open Houses addresses nineteenth-century documentary and print culture dedicated to convincing the reader of the wretchedness of housing of the poor and its urgent need for reform. It illustrates the ways in which "looking into" these houses animated new models for social critique in tandem with new forms for the novel.

In the context of this rapidly changing world, Rachel Worth explores the ways in which the clothing of the rural working classes was represented visually in paintings and photographs and by the literary sources of documentary, autobiography and fiction, as well as by the particular pattern of survival and collection by museums of garments of rural provenance. Rachel Worth explores ways in which clothing and how it is represented throws light on wider social and cultural aspects of society, as well as how 'traditional' styles of dress, like men's smock-frocks or women's sun-bonnets, came to be replaced by 'fashion'. Her compelling study, with black & white and colour illustrations, both adds a broader dimension to the history of dress by considering it within the social and cultural context of its time and discusses how clothing enriches our understanding of the social history of the Victorian period.