Description
Book SynopsisThis volume focuses on the lives of tradesmen and women in the northern ''industrial'' and commercial towns of Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool between 1788 and 1832. It incorporates the correspondence of the Wilson family of Sheffield snuff manufacturers (1788-95); the memoir of a Liverpool baker, John Coleman (1797); the diary of George Heywood, a Manchester grocer (1809-15); and the letterbook of the Leeds milliner, Robert Ayrey (1832). Each of the four sets of primary materials offers detailed insights into the domestic, familial, ''personal'' and spiritual lives of their authors and their friends and relations, as well as shedding light on their business dealings and links with the wider communities in which they lived. It is unusual to find such intimate material from relatively modest middling men and women of this period extant, and the survival and publication of these documents provides us with rare vistas onto their experiences, expectations and anxieties. Although
Trade ReviewA fascinating glimpse of domestic, familial, personal, emotional and even spiritual life, and its interaction with commercial engagement ... Most readers then will both enjoy and benefit from this collection. * Jane Humphries, Northern History *
This volume is a valuable collection of primary sources that puts people back into the history of the Industrial Revolution ... This carefully selected collection elevates the writings and voices of ordinary tradespeople outside of London in a field that has so often privileged the exceptional and the metropolis. * Tawny Paul, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations General introduction 1: Introduction to the Wilson Correspondence 2: The Wilson Correspondence 3: Introduction to John Coleman's Memoir and Accounts 4: John Coleman's Memoir 5: John Coleman's Accounts 6: Introduction to George Heywood's Diary and Memoir 7: George Heywood's Diary and Memoir 8: Introduction to Robert Ayrey's Letterbook 9: Robert Ayrey's Letterbook Index
