Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution
- The Agricultural Revolution of the 17th-18th Centuries
- The Revolution in the Manufacture of Textiles
- The Revolution in Power
  - Railroads
  - Steam Ships
- The Great Engineers
- The Process of Industrialization
Social and Political Effects
- The Lives of Workers
- Urban Life: New Social Classes
- Social Reformism
Literary Response

The Industrial Revolution

The Agricultural Revolution of the 17th-18th Centuries
- Abraham Cowley (1618-1667): Of Agriculture, 1650 [At this Site]
- Turnips
- Accounts of the "Potato Revolution" 1695 - 1845 [At this Site]
- John A. Mazis: The Potato [Modern Account][At UMN]
- Field Rotation
- Animal Breeding
The Revolution in the Manufacture of Textiles
- 2ND Arnold Toynbee (1852-1883): Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England [At McMaster][Full Text]
- Leeds Woolen Workers' Petition, 1786 [At this Site]
  Attacking the effects of machinery.
- Leeds Cloth Merchants' Letter, 1791 [At this Site]
  Defending machinery.
The Revolution in Power
- WEB The Steam Engine Library
  Full texts of many books on the history of the Steam Engine. A splendid resource.
- WEB The Kew Bridge Steam Museum [In the UK]
- Thomas Newcomen: The Newcomen Engine [At Internet Archive, from exeter.ac.uk][Sketch picture]
- James Watt (1736-1819): The Steam Engine, c. 1769 [At this Site][Picture]
- Thomas H. Marshall: James Watt, 1925 [At Steam Engine Library][Full Text]
- Richard Guest: Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture, 1823, excerpts [At this Site]
  On the application of steam power to cotton looms and the social effects.
- William Radcliffe: Origin of...Power Loom Weaving, 1828, excerpts [At this Site]
  On the application of steam power to cotton looms.
- Railroads
- Steam Ships
  - Line of American Packets Between New York and Liverpool, Evening Post, New York, October 27, 1817 [At AMDOCS]
    Not steam ships, but an indication of the growth of a market.
  - Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859): The S.S. Great Britain, 1839 [At History UK][Picture+text]
    The first ocean-going steam propeller ship.
  - Two Steamboat Disasters at a Time, The U.S. Nautical Magazine and Naval Journal Vol. IV (1855), p 259. [At AMDOCS]
- Curt Anderson: The Two Countries That Invented the Industrial Revolution [At emachinetool.com][Modern Article]
  An explanation of the different functions of invention in Britain and the United States.
The Great Engineers
- List of the Great Engineers [At Internet Archive, from Heriot-Watt]
- Charles Babbage Page, (1791-1871) [At Exeter University]
  Babbage was a major pioneer in computing.
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859): Works [At University of Dundee][Modern summary]
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859): The Clifton Suspension Bridge [link broken][picture]
The Process of Industrialization
- Tables Illustrating the Spread of Industrialization, [At this Site]
- Spread of Railways in Europe [At this Site]
- Camillo de Cavour: Railways in Italy

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Social and Political Effects

The Lives of Workers
- Observations on the Loss of Woollen Spinning, 1794, excerpts [At this Site]
- The Life of the Industrial Worker in Ninteenth-Century England [At Victorian Web]
- Edwin Chadwick (1803-1890): Report on Sanitary Conditions, 1842 [At Victorian Web]
- Women Miners in the English Coal Pits, 1842 [At this Site]
- Texts on the Physical Effects of Factory Work [At Victorian Web]
- Harret Robinson: Lowell Mill Girls, 1834-1848 [At this Site]
- Michael Faraday: Observations on the Filth of the Thames, contained in a letter addressed to the Editor of " The Times" Newspaper, 1855 [At U.C. Irvine]
Urban Life: New Social Classes
- The Peterloo Massacre, 1819 [At this Site]
- Friedrich Engels: Industrial Manchester, 1844, excerpts [At this Site]
  From The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
- Andrew Ure (1778-1857): The Philosophy of the Manufacturers, 1835, excerpts [At this Site]
Social Reformism
- Florence Nightingale (1820-1910): Rural Hygiene [At this Site]
  Life on the farm was not that much of an improvement over a factory. But, eventually, the social activists turned their eyes on the countryside as well.

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Literary Response

William Blake: Preface to 'Milton', 1804 [At Spartacus.net]
William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Excursion, 1814 [At this Site]
Charles Dickens: Hard Times, Excerpts [At Internet Archive, from PIMA]
Charles Dickens: Hard Times, Chapter 2 [At Mt Holyoke]
Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South, 1855, excerpts [At Internet Archive, from Clinch Valley College]
Elizabeth Gaskell: Mary Barton - A tale of Manchester life [At Project Gutenberg][Full Text]
Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South [At Project Gutenberg][Full Text]
Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford [At Project Gutenberg][Full Text]
Thomas Carlyle: Signs of the Times: The "Mechanical Age [At this Site]
Emile Zola (1840-1902): Germinal, 1885, extracts [At WSU]
Andrew Carnegie (1835�1919): The Gospel of Wealth, 1889 [At this Site]
Horatio Alger: The Boy who Makes Good

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NOTES:

Dates of accession of material added since July 1998 can be seen in the New Additions page.. The date of inception was 9/22/1997.

Links to files at other site are indicated by [At some indication of the site name or location]. Locally available texts are marked by [At this Site].

WEB indicates a link to one of small number of high quality web sites which provide either more texts or an especially valuable overview.

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created 1997: last revised 4/2/2007