{"title":"The Victorians","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLearn more about life in th\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ee\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Victorian\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e period\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ewith\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e our \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003especially\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e curated selection of books by leading historians and authors. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"angel-meadow","title":"Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain's Most Savage Slum","description":"\u003cp\u003eStep into the Victorian underworld of Angel Meadow, the vilest and most dangerous slum of the Industrial Revolution. In the shadow of the world's first cotton mill, 30,000 souls trapped by poverty are fighting for survival as the British Empire is built upon their backs.Thieves and prostitutes keep company with rats in overcrowded lodging houses and deep cellars on the banks of a black river, the Irk. Gangs of 'scuttlers' stalk the streets in pointed, brass-tripped clogs. Those who evade their clutches are hunted down by cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis. Lawless drinking dens and a cold slab in the dead house provide the only relief from this filthy and frightening world.In this shocking book, journalist Dean Kirby takes readers on a hair-raising journey through the alleyways, gin palaces and underground vaults of this nineteenth century Manchester slum, which was considered so diabolical it was re-christened 'hell upon earth' by Friedrich Engels. Enter Angel Meadow if you dare...\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pen \u0026 Sword","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":34074190053507,"sku":"9781783831524","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0364\/6285\/4275\/products\/9781783831524.jpg?v=1610104605"},{"product_id":"bitten-by-witchfever","title":"Bitten by Witch Fever","description":"\u003cp\u003eBeautiful to leaf through and compelling to read, ‘Bitten by Witch Fever’ is a highly original and captivating volume that interleaves facsimile sections of alluring, arsenic-laden wallpapers, all laboratory-tested for the first time, with thought-provoking narrative, tracing the arresting story of the manufacture, uses and effects of arsenic in the 19th-century home, in particular, the pigments ingrained in popular wallpapers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this book, which was written in association with The National Archives, you will discover how pigments, such as Scheele’s green and Schweinfurt green, were created using arsenic to produce vibrant and durable dyes, which became instant favourites with wallpaper designers and householders alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on contemporary case studies and reports in the press, this book highlights how, by the middle of the century, manufacturers were producing millions of rolls of arsenical wallpaper, with devastating consequences for those working in their factories and for those living in rooms decorated with the deadly designs. The wallpaper sections display dazzling long-lost work from the great designers and printers of the age, including Christopher Dresser, Corbière, Son \u0026amp; Brindle, Charles Knowles \u0026amp; Co. and Morris \u0026amp; Co. – whose owner was famously dismissive of the fatal effects of living within arsenic-laden walls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt wasn’t only wallpaper manufacturers, however, that used arsenical colours in the production process. Arsenice dyes were used for furnishing textiles, such as curtains and bedclothes; in the fashion industry for clothes and accessories; and even in the production of food colourings. \u003cem\u003eBitten By Witch Fever\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003elooks at the ubiquity of arsenic in the Victorian home, and in Victorian murders.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Thames \u0026 Hudson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":34074199326851,"sku":"9780500518380","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0364\/6285\/4275\/products\/71lQSSfLCEL.jpg?v=1637792462"},{"product_id":"bradshaws-handbook-1863","title":"Bradshaw's Handbook: 1863 Replica Edition","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA landmark in the history of the tour guide. A snapshot of Britain in the 1860s. 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Together with the stunning full-colour hand-painted 'maps descriptive of London poverty' and a comprehensive street index these walks provide a guide of unsurpassed detail.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Deptford Forum Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":34074385219715,"sku":"9781898536314","price":14.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0364\/6285\/4275\/products\/9781898536314.jpg?v=1610376466"},{"product_id":"victorious-century","title":"Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906","description":"\u003cp\u003eTo live in nineteenth-century Britain was to experience an astonishing series of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent in the human experience. There were revolutions in transport, communication, work; cities grew vast; scientific ideas made the intellectual landscape unrecognizable. This was an exhilarating time, but also a horrifying one.In his dazzling new book David Cannadine has created a bold, fascinating new interpretation of the British nineteenth century in all its energy and dynamism, darkness and vice. This was a country which saw itself at the summit of the world. And yet it was a society also convulsed by doubt, fear and introspection. Victorious Century reframes a time at once strangely familiar and yet wholly unlike our own.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":34074407698563,"sku":"9780141019130","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0364\/6285\/4275\/products\/9780141019130.jpg?v=1610379584"},{"product_id":"black-victorians-hidden-in-history-1","title":"Black Victorians: Hidden in History","description":"A landmark history exploring and celebrating the lives of Black Victorians. Beyond the patrician vision of Victorian Britain traditionally advanced in our textbooks, there always existed another, more diverse Britain, populated by people of colour marking achievements both ordinary and extraordinary. In this deeply researched and dynamic history, Woolf and Abraham reach into the archives to recentre our attention on marginalised Black Victorians, from leading medic George Rice to political agitator William Cuffay to abolitionists Henry 'Box' Brown and Sarah Parker Remond; from pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Eaton to renowned composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile acknowledging the paradoxes of Victorian views of race, Black Victorians demonstrates, with storytelling verve and a liberatory impulse, how Black people were visible and influential, firmly rooted in British life.","brand":"Duckworth","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43259822932099,"sku":"9780715654880","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0364\/6285\/4275\/files\/9780715654880.jpg?v=1688731241"},{"product_id":"the-prince-and-the-plunder-how-britain-took-one-small-boy-and-hundreds-of-treasures-from-ethiopia","title":"The Prince and the Plunder: How Britain took one small boy and hundreds of treasures from Ethiopia","description":"\u003cspan\u003eIn 1868, British troops charged into the mountain empire of Ethiopia, stormed the citadel of its monarch Tewodros II and grabbed piles of his treasures and sacred manuscripts. 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The book also follows the loot and tracks it down to its current hiding places in bank vaults, museum store cupboards and a boarded-up cavity in Westminster Abbey.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA story of adventure, trauma and tragedy, The Prince and the Plunder is also a tale for our times, as we re-examine Britain's past, pull down statues of imperial grandees and look for other figures to commemorate and celebrate in their place.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"History Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43668730445955,"sku":"9781803996509","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0364\/6285\/4275\/files\/9781803996509.jpg?v=1707753207"},{"product_id":"james-and-john-a-true-story-of-prejudice-and-murder","title":"James and John: A True Story of Prejudice and Murder","description":"\u003cspan\u003eFrom award-winning historian and Sunday Times bestselling author Chris Bryant MP, James and John tells the story of what it meant to be gay in early 19th-century Britain through the lens of a landmark trial. They had nothing to expect from the mercy of the crown; their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen Charles Dickens wrote these tragic lines he was penning fact, not fiction. He had visited the condemned cells at the infamous prison at Newgate, where seventeen men who had been sentenced to death were awaiting news of their pleas for mercy. Two men stood out: James Pratt and John Smith, who had been convicted of homosexuality.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTheirs was ‘an unnatural offence’, a crime so unmentionable it was never named. That was why they alone despaired and, as the turnkey told Dickens, why they alone were ‘dead men’. The 1830s ushered in great change in Britain.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn a few short years the government swept away slavery, rotten boroughs, child labour, bribery and corruption in elections, the ban on trades unions and civil marriage. They also curtailed the ‘bloody code’ that treated 200 petty crimes as capital offences. Some thought the death penalty itself was wrong.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThere had not been a hanging at Newgate for two years; hundreds were reprieved. Yet when the King met with his ‘hanging’ Cabinet, they decided to reprieve all bar James and John. 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It may sound like a pub guide, yet it actually refers to a type of late nineteenth-century British map designed specifically to shock and shame people into drinking less. This book explores how drink maps of particular cities were published in an attempt to fight increasingly rampant alcohol consumption, from Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield to Oxford, London and Norwich. Featuring red symbols to indicate where alcohol was sold, these special street maps were posted prominently in public places, submitted as evidence, sent to Members of Parliament and published in newspapers to show just how inebriated a neighbourhood could be.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThey promoted the message that having fewer places to buy alcohol was the answer to reducing widespread crime, poverty and sickness. And they worked – at first. 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Late Victorians and Edwardians were obsessed with tracking down the locations-dubbed \"Dickensland\"-that famously featured in his novels. But his fans were faced with a city that was undergoing rapid redevelopment, where literary shrines were far from sacred.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOver the following century, sites connected with Dickens were demolished, relocated, and reimagined. Lee Jackson traces the fascinating history of Dickensian tourism, exploring both real Victorian London and a fictional city shaped by fandom, tourism, and heritage entrepreneurs. Beginning with the late nineteenth century, Jackson investigates key sites of literary pilgrimage and their relationship with Dickens and his work, revealing hidden, reinvented, and even faked locations.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom vanishing coaching inns to submerged riverside stairs, hidden burial grounds to apocryphal shops, Dickensland charts the curious history of an imaginary world.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yale University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44849512054915,"sku":"9780300279344","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0364\/6285\/4275\/files\/9780300279344.jpg?v=1727710369"},{"product_id":"live-like-a-victorian-discovering-the-secrets-of-the-victorians","title":"Live Like A Victorian: Discovering the Secrets of the Victorians","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis beautifully illustrated book takes young readers on an immersive tour of a transformative period in history, when the Industrial Revolution, new inventions, and social change reshaped life in Britain. 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