Through the ‘messy tales’ of more than 350 working-class lives, Emma Griffin arrives at an upbeat interpretation of the Industrial Revolution most of us would hardly recognise. It is quite enthralling.”—Elizabeth Grice, Oldie Magazine
Oldie Magaizne - Elizabeth Grice
This is a brave book that challenges accepted wisdom by offering a decidedly optimistic view of the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the opportunities, freedoms and choices available to the working class.”—Pat Hudson, Times Higher Education Supplement
Times Higher Education Supplement - Pat Hudson
‘This is a novel twist on the story behind the Industrial Revolution. Griffin does a fine job in personalising the social history of the period by trawling through hundreds of autobiographies from 1760-1900 to offer first-hand experiences of how this era impacted upon the working classes, including a rise in income and improved literacy.’—Steve Harnell, Who Do You Think You Are Magazine
Who Do You Think You Are Magazine - Stever Harnell
Griffin’s crisp and accessible prose rests on a foundation of scrupulous scholarship.”—Amanda Vickery, The Guardian
The Guardian - Amanda Vickery
'A totally compelling account of the Industrial Revolution. Through a remarkable range of life stories, Emma Griffin opens up this extraordinary epoch of change, providing a brilliant chronicle of its social history and upending traditional interpretations in the process. With her light touch and rigorous scholarship, Griffin provides an important and rewarding overview of this defining moment in British history.' - Tristram Hunt, author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City
‘While the author’s purpose is a serious study, this won’t prevent anyone from lapping up the inspiring stories in this meaty and satisfying book.’—Lorraine Courtney, Irish Times
'Emma Griffin gives a new and powerful voice to the men and women whose blood and sweat greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution.' - Tim Hitchcock, author of Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London
‘Griffin’s excellent history of writing by those born in poverty. . .shine[s] a light on what working men endured. . .and what they felt about it, in their own words.’—Lesley McDowell, Sunday Herald
Sunday Herald - Lesley McDowell
A provocative study.”—The New Yorker
Liberty’s Dawn is a triumph, achieved in fewer than 250 gracefully written pages. They persuasively purvey Griffin’s historical conviction. She is intimate with her audience, wooing it and teasing it along the way.”—Anthony Fletcher, Times Literary Supplement
Times Literary Supplement - Anthony Fletcher
“A provocative study.”—The New Yorker
It wasn’t all Bleak House and Oliver Twist. According to historian Griffin (A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution), the negative impact of the Industrial Revolution has been grossly exaggerated and misconstrued. Through a close reading of over 300 autobiographies written by English workers from 1760–1900, Griffin unfurls a mostly convincing reinterpretation peopled by empowered workers newly able to carve out enough personal freedom to maintain control over their destinies. The author delves into three realms—work, love (and sex), and culture (education and religion)—to craft a complex picture. Her liberal use of textual excerpts emphasizes and personalizes the effect of this socioeconomic revolution on individuals and families. Men, women, and children all worked, and though the labor wasn’t easy, they saw even difficult industrial jobs as tremendous economic opportunities. Men enjoyed steadier work and correspondingly steadier wages—luxuries mostly unfamiliar to the generation of working men before them—and mass production spurred urbanization and a concomitant coming together of diverse ideas. Many working people sought education for self-improvement and advancement, embraced nonconformist religious denominations to exercise independent choice in spiritual matters, and participated in political movements to push for the rights of the working man. All in all, an admirably intimate and expansive revisionist history. (June)
“In this marvelous book, Liberty’s Dawn , Emma Griffin introduces us to or reacquaints us with 350 of the William Aitkens of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain—lower-class men and a handful of women who wrote autobiographies, some of them printed, many of them manuscript accounts discovered in repositories across the country.”—Brian Lewis, McGill University
Chicago Journals - Brian Lewis
Griffin (history, Univ. of East Anglia; A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution) shows the effects of Britain’s industrialization on the work, emotions, and culture of a diverse group of British working-class men (and some women) based on more than 300 autobiographies and memoirs (some unpublished) written between 1760 and 1900. Unlike the harsh conditions portrayed by Arnold Toynbee, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Friedrich Engels, et al., Griffin, with contextual commentary, allows the firsthand accounts from factory operatives, miners, tradesmen, and laborers to speak for themselves, underlining the increased opportunities for freedom of expression and of religion, romance, and politics. These evocative, earnest pieces, retrieved from record offices and libraries, are the output of a remarkably literate class that acquired rudimentary learning through dame, night, or Sunday school classes, mutual improvement societies, or self-education. Griffin shows that workers were able to establish autonomy in the face of trying and evolving circumstances. Few regretted leaving their preindustrial occupations; almost none returned, dismissing the uncertainty of seasonal rural work.
Verdict Griffin balances the era’s hardships with its improvements while recognizing the formidable changes that industrialization wrought upon British society. Readers will be surprised by the observations made by those directly affected. In conjunction with more traditional studies, this engaging collection of personal accounts will appeal to consumers of social history among both general readers and specialists.Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.