An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England

by Edward Potts Cheyney

Edward Potts Cheyney, professor of European history at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote this introduction for students who wanted to understand how ordinary English people lived and worked across the centuries. Rather than kings and battles, he follows the manor and its open fields, the growth of towns, guilds and trade, the upheavals of the later Middle Ages, the changes of the Tudor period and the vast transformation brought by the Industrial Revolution, ending with the social reforms of the nineteenth century. Each chapter ends with a guide to further reading, and the book first appeared in 1901. Clear and well organized, it shows the economic and social life that lay beneath political history. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.