BRITISH INDUSTRIAL HISTORY
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 1760-1830
by T S Ashton

Though the Industrial Revolution has sometimes been regarded as a catastrophe, in this book it is presented as an achievement, for in spite of destructive wars and a rapid growth of population the material standards of most of the British people were raised. Ashton lays stress on the intellectual and economic, no less than on the technical, aspects of the movement. For this OPUS edition, the author made some revisions of the text, and brought the Bibliography up to date.

The late T.S.Ashton was Professor of Economic History in the University of London from 1944 to 1954, and Emeritus Professor until his death in 1968.
 

First published in the Home University Library 1948
First issued (with revisions) in Oxford Paperbacks University Series 1968
This reprint 1973

Cover illustration: the steam-engine erected by Newcomen and Savery at Dudley Castle. Reproduced by permission of the editors of A History of Technology.
THE WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD 
by J D Chambers

This book carries on the story so well told by Professor T.S.Ashton in OPUS 38: The Industrial Revolution 1760-1830 and so successfully continued in Professor R.S.Sayers's OPUS 34: A History of Economic Change in England 1880-1939. Professor Chambers's vivid and authoritative account of Britain's economic life between 1820 and 1880 begins when the country was in the transition phase from a primarily agricultural and commercial economy to a modern industrial state. At the end of the period Britain was the world's banker, trader, and collier, and a competitor with other nations whom she herself had materially assisted. The author revised both the text and the bibliography for this second edition.

The late J D Chambers was Professor of Economic and Social History in the University of Nottingham from 1958 to 1964.

First published in the Home University Library 1961
Second edition published as an Oxford University Press paperback 1968
Reprinted 1974

Cover illustration: a Bessemer converter (Mansell Collection)

Both these books come from the Collection of Mrs DJ Barker... my mum

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