The people and the British economy, 1830-1914

This book is unusual among histories of the British economy. It is about people rather than things; about the overall income and wealth of Britain, its growth, and how that income and wealth was produced by and distributed between different people in the population. It is about economic and social power, risk and successful enterprise, but also about deprivation, disease, and failure. Population growth has a central place, together with the changes in home and workplace which transformed the lives of successive generations in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The fabric of Victorian houses, the sales of music-hall songs, and the stench of city graveyards are used vividly to describe the period. Between 1830 and 1914 Britain became the world's major trading nation, carrier of the majority of the world's goods, by far the largest investor overseas, and the centre of the world's financial system. It was an exceptional time in the history of the country; even a hundred years later, many look back to it with nostalgia. This book describes and assesses the reality of what was achieved in those eighty-five years.