Search results for ""Author Malcolm Dick""
Liverpool University Press James Watt (1736-1819): Culture, Innovation and Enlightenment
James Watt (1736-1819) was a pivotal figure of the Industrial Revolution. His career as a scientific instrument maker, inventor and engineer was developed in Scotland, his land of birth. His subsequent national and international significance as a scientist, technologist and businessman was formed in the Birmingham area. There, his partnership with Matthew Boulton and the intellectual and personal support of other members of the Lunar Society network, such as Erasmus Darwin, James Keir, William Small and Josiah Wedgwood, enabled him to translate his improvements in steam technology into efficient machines. His pumping and rotative steam engines represent a summit of technological achievement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This is the traditional picture of James Watt. After his death, his surviving son, James Watt junior projected his father’s image through commissioning sculptures, medals, paintings and biographies which celebrated his reputation as a ‘great man’ of the Industrial Revolution. In popular historical understanding Watt has also become a hero of modernity, but the context in which he operated and the roles of others in shaping his ideas have been downplayed. This book explores new aspects of his work and evaluates him in his locational, family, social and intellectual contexts.
£27.49
Liverpool University Press Pen, print and communication in the eighteenth century
During the eighteenth century there was a growing interest in recording, listing and documenting the world, whether for personal interest and private consumption, or general record and the greater good. Such documentation was done through both the written and printed word. Each genre had its own material conventions and spawned industries which supported these practices. This volume considers writing and printing in parallel: it highlights the intersections between the two methods of communication; discusses the medium and materiality of the message; considers how writing and printing were deployed in the construction of personal and cultural identities; and explores the different dimensions surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of private and public letters, words and texts during the eighteenth-century. In combination the chapters in this volume consider how the processes of both writing and printing contributed to the creation of cultural identity and taste, assisted in the spread of knowledge and furthered personal, political, economic, social and cultural change in Britain and the wider-world. This volume provides an original narrative on the nature of communication and brings a fresh perspective on printing history, print culture and the literate society of the Enlightenment.
£29.99
Liverpool University Press Birmingham: The Workshop of the World
Birmingham is a city with an extraordinarily diverse achievement in fields as varied as science, industry, politics, education, medicine, printing and the arts. Labels such as the ‘first industrial city’, ‘city of a thousand trades’, ‘the best-governed city in the world’ and ‘the youngest city in Europe’ have been applied to the town. This new publication, the first major history of Birmingham since the 1970s, is published to commemorate the 850th anniversary of Birmingham’s market charter in 1166, an event which marked the first step in the rise of Birmingham as a commercial and industrial powerhouse. Authored by scholars, but written for a general readership, this detailed, accessible and richly illustrated book is both a definitive reference work and a readable account of a diverse, culturally rich and high-achieving city. Many aspects of the history of Birmingham are presented for the first time outside academic publications: its diverse people’s history, a rich prehistoric and Roman past, the rise of Birmingham in medieval and early modern times, the evolution of an innovative system of education, a varied experience in art and design and an extraordinary printing history. The book covers economic and political themes and new approaches to the history of society and culture. It is illustrated with many images which have never before been published either in books or on the web. The result is a visually stunning and factually illuminating book which will appeal to many kinds of people.
£50.78
Liverpool University Press James Watt (1736-1819): Culture, Innovation and Enlightenment
James Watt (1736-1819) was a pivotal figure of the Industrial Revolution. His career as a scientific instrument maker, inventor and engineer was developed in Scotland, his land of birth. His subsequent national and international significance as a scientist, technologist and businessman was formed in the Birmingham area. There, his partnership with Matthew Boulton and the intellectual and personal support of other members of the Lunar Society network, such as Erasmus Darwin, James Keir, William Small and Josiah Wedgwood, enabled him to translate his improvements in steam technology into efficient machines. His pumping and rotative steam engines represent a summit of technological achievement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This is the traditional picture of James Watt. After his death, his surviving son, James Watt junior projected his father’s image through commissioning sculptures, medals, paintings and biographies which celebrated his reputation as a ‘great man’ of the Industrial Revolution. In popular historical understanding Watt has also become a hero of modernity, but the context in which he operated and the roles of others in shaping his ideas have been downplayed. This book explores new aspects of his work and evaluates him in his locational, family, social and intellectual contexts.
£109.50
Liverpool University Press Birmingham: The Workshop of the World
Birmingham is a city with an extraordinarily diverse achievement in fields as varied as science, industry, politics, education, medicine, printing and the arts. Labels such as the ‘first industrial city’, ‘city of a thousand trades’, ‘the best-governed city in the world’ and ‘the youngest city in Europe’ have been applied to the town. This new publication, the first major history of Birmingham since the 1970s, is published to commemorate the 850th anniversary of Birmingham’s market charter in 1166, an event which marked the first step in the rise of Birmingham as a commercial and industrial powerhouse. Authored by scholars, but written for a general readership, this detailed, accessible and richly illustrated book is both a definitive reference work and a readable account of a diverse, culturally rich and high-achieving city. Many aspects of the history of Birmingham are presented for the first time outside academic publications: its diverse people’s history, a rich prehistoric and Roman past, the rise of Birmingham in medieval and early modern times, the evolution of an innovative system of education, a varied experience in art and design and an extraordinary printing history. The book covers economic and political themes and new approaches to the history of society and culture. It is illustrated with many images which have never before been published either in books or on the web. The result is a visually stunning and factually illuminating book which will appeal to many kinds of people.
£17.30
University of Hertfordshire Press Gardens and Green Spaces in the West Midlands since 1700
Garden history is more than the study of individuals such as 'Capability Brown' who created estates for a wealthy élite. A new approach, which includes insights from geology and archaeology, the perspectives of social class and gender, the history of art and architecture, science, technology and literature, is changing our perspective so that we can see gardens and gardening within wider social, economic, political and cultural contexts. Landscapes were created, formed and interpreted by town dwellers, women and lesser-known gardeners and designers as well as the 'great men' of the past. Based on papers given at a conference at the University of Birmingham, and written by distinguished scholars who are also writing for a wide audience, these essays highlight the wealth of recent research into landscape and green spaces in the West Midlands. The book ranges from the Picturesque movement in Herefordshire to William Shenstone's unique ferme ornée at The Leasowes, near Halesowen and the aspirational gardens and allotments of the Quaker ironmasters at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. Other contributions celebrate women's entrepreneurial activity in the nursery trade, chart the uncovering and restoration of a hidden eighteenth-century landscape at Hagley in Worcestershire and explore the lost Vauxhall pleasure gardens in Birmingham, which were established as a commercial venture in the eighteenth century. An examination of Victorian public parks reveals how their aesthetics were shaped by architecture made from the products of manufacturing industry while a study of three modest suburban estates considers how local industrialists shaped the environment of south Birmingham. The relationships between health, medicine and green spaces are explored through an analysis of the role of 'therapeutic landscapes' in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Worcestershire. Enhanced with maps, plans and black-and-white and colour illustrations, this is a volume of important scholarship that places the West Midlands at the heart of landscape history.
£16.99
Peter Lang International Academic Publishers Print, Politics and the Provincial Press in Modern Britain
The provincial newspaper was read by peers, politicians and the proletariat alike. It is striking, however, how limited a range of newspapers and journals are offered for analysis in most historical studies of the political media in modern Britain. The predominance of the London political press and Punch in academic discourse appears to derive largely from the easy availability of these papers and journals to modern scholars rather than their actual distribution and popularity. Consequently, there has been hitherto a distinct lack of attention given to the British regional press by historians. This collection aims to correct this imbalance by investigating the development, maturation and persistence of the provincial political press in the British Isles in the modern era. Chapters covering aspects of the Irish, Yorkshire, Welsh, Scottish and Midlands political press are included to ensure a representative geographical spread of provincial Britain. These chapters cover previously neglected aspects of print culture, political literacy and reading practices across the regions of Britain in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to offer an introduction to research in this burgeoning field of study.
£49.55
