Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140135820 ISBN 13: 9780140135824

Publisher: Penguin UK, 1990

In 1837, in England and Wales, there were only five provincial cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants. By 1891 there were twenty-three. Over the same period London’s population more than doubled. In this companion volume to Victorian People and Victorian Things, Lord Briggs focuses on the cities of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Melbourne (an example of a Victorian community overseas) and London, comparing and contrasting their social, political and topographical development. Full of illuminating detail, Victorian Cities presents a unique social, political and economic bird's-eye view of the past.

From the Back Cover:

The cities of this book are the cities of the railway and tramway age, of the age of steam and of gas, of a society sometimes restless, sometimes complacent, moving, often fumbling and faltering, towards greater democracy. The building of the cities was a characteristic Victorian Achievement, impressive in scale but limited in vision, creating new opportunities but also providing massive new problems.

About the Author:

Asa Briggs was born in 1921 at Keighley, Yorkshire, and from 1955 to 1961 he was Professor of Modern History at Leeds University, and in 1961 he was the first academic to be appointed to the then new University of Sussex. Six years later he was appointed Vice-Chancellor. From 1976 to 1991 he was Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. He was Chancellor of the Open University from 1978 to 1994. In 1976 he was made a life peer. He is married with four children. His main field of historical research has been in nineteenth- and twentieth-century social and cultural history. He has also written A Social History of England, a revised edition of which appeared in 1994. He is currently President of the British Social History Society and of the Victorian Society.