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...

A radical history of the extraordinary Freak performers whose talents and disabilities helped define the Victorian era and beyond.Ladies and gentlemen, step right up…On 23 March, 1844, General Tom Thumb, at 25 inches tall, entered the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace and bowed to Queen Victoria. On both sides of the Atlantic, this event marked a tipping point in the nineteenth century: the age of the ‘Freak’ was born.Be...

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up…On 23 March, 1844, General Tom Thumb, at 25 inches tall, entered the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace and bowed to Queen Victoria. On both sides of the Atlantic, this event marked a tipping point in the nineteenth century: the age of the ‘Freak’ was born.Bewitching all levels of society, the ‘Freak Show’ was a world of astonishing spectacle and entertainment. But the real stories and human dramas of the perfo...

"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).This "provocative study" looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class ( The New Yorker). The era didn't just bring ...

Staying Power is a panoramic history of black Britons. Stretching back to the Roman conquest, encompassing the court of Henry VIII, and following a host of characters from Mary Seacole to the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Peter Fryer paints a picture of two thousand years of Black presence in Britain.First published in the '80s, amidst race riots and police brutality, Fryer's history performed a deeply political act; revealing how Africans, Asians and their descendants had long bee...

The Nova Scotia Black Experience Through the Centuries is a comprehensive account of the African Nova Scotian struggle to build a vital community in the face of racial discrimination.Originally published in two volumes as Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land, this illustrated edition has been extensively updated and includes a new chapter tracing the experiences of Nova Scotia's black community into the twenty-first century. Author Bridglal Pachai profiles the individuals and org...

Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain’s largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica’s vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood.Thistlewood’s diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over slav...

Selected by Bernardine Evaristo as an Observer Best Books 2021Green Unpleasant Land explores the repressed history of rural England's links to transatlantic enslavement and the East India Company.Combining essays, poems and stories, it details the colonial links of country houses, moorlands, woodlands, village pubs and graveyards. It also explores the links between rural poverty, particularly enclosure, and colonial figures, such as plantation-owners and East India...

From a range of leading academics and historians, this collection of essays examines Irish emigration during the Great Famine of the 1840s. From the mechanics of how this was arranged to the fate of the men, women and children who landed on the shores of the nations of the world, this work provides a remarkable insight into one of the most traumatic and transformative periods of Ireland's history. More importantly, this collection of essays demonstrates how the Famine ...

This book re-examines the relationship between Britain and colonial slavery in a crucial period in the birth of modern Britain. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of British slave-owners and mortgagees who received compensation from the state for the end of slavery, and tracing their trajectories in British life, the volume explores the commercial, political, cultural, social, intellectual, physical and imperial legacies of slave-ownership. It transcends conventional divisions in history-...

A treasure trove of incredible lives lived.— RICK MERCER, comedian and authorMuir sets out to restore the faces of women who worked and struggled in nineteenth-century Toronto. A fascinating read.— WARREN CLEMENTS, author and publisherEmphasizes the enormously influential role women had in laying the groundwork for life in the city today.— DR. ROSE A. DYSON, author of Mind Abuse: Media Violence and Its ...