A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 to 1900
Author(s): Graeme Morton (Author, Editor), Dr. Trevor Griffiths (Author, Editor)
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication Date: 4 Aug. 2010
Language: English
Print length: 336 pages
ISBN-10: 0748621709
ISBN-13: 9780748621705
Book Description
The nineteenth century was a period of profound change in Scottish history. Industrialisation, improved communications, agricultural transformation, country to town migration, upheavals in the church, increased trade, and imperialism — all these affected the pace and rhythm of everyday life across the country. At the same time increased literacy helped to generate new patterns of identity, extending beyond the local to encompass the nation, which challenged certainties of how the world was viewed. With new styles of living came new dangers to the physical and moral health of the population, and increased apprehension of crime and disorder. Industrialisation created opportunities for consumption and recreation but with tangible environmental and economic costs. Rural Scotland adjusted to changes in farming practice and the traumas of population loss and began to look to the opportunities presented by recreation and tourism. The large-scale creation and survival of documentary evidence and records make the study of everyday life during this period practicable in depth for the first time. This volume presents a vivid account that includes the experiences of all the people of Scotland. It draws on every kind of available evidence and on work in social and cultural history, sociology and anthropology. The series will be complete in four volumes.
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From the Back Cover
The nineteenth century was a period of profound change in Scottish history. Industrialisation, improved communications, agricultural transformation, country to town migration, upheavals in the church, increased trade, and imperialism – all these affected the pace and rhythm of everyday life across the country. At the same time increased literacy helped to generate new patterns of identity, extending beyond the local to encompass the nation, which challenged certainties of how the world was viewed. With new styles of living came new dangers to the physical and moral health of the population, and increased apprehension of crime and disorder. Industrialisation created opportunities for consumption and recreation but with tangible environmental and economic costs. Rural Scotland adjusted to changes in farming practice and the traumas of population loss and began to look to the opportunities presented by recreation and tourism. The large-scale creation and survival of documentary evidence and records make the study of everyday life during this period practicable in depth for the first time. This volume presents a vivid account that includes the experiences of all the people of Scotland. It draws on every kind of available evidence and on work in social and cultural history, sociology and anthropology.
About the Author
Graeme Morton is the Scottish Studies Foundation Chair and Director of the Centre for Scottish Studies at the University of Guelph. His research interests cover all aspects of Scottish national identity and nationalism, with a current focus on late Victorian migrations and diasporic associational culture. He is completing Ourselves and Others: Scotland, 1832-1914 for EUP and his publications include Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie (2009), William Wallace: Man & Myth (2004) and Unionist-Nationalism (1999). Educated at the University of Oxford, Trevor Griffiths has worked on aspects of working-class culture and society in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and developments in textile technology in Britain prior to and during the Industrial Revolution. He is currently working on a study of cinema and cinema-going in Scotland the first half of the twentieth century.
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