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Industrial Revolution

See Main Page for a guide to all contents of all sections.

• 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 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]
• 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 (1835­1919): The Gospel of Wealth, 1889 [At this Site]
• Horatio Alger: The Boy who Makes Good