The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950, volume 2: People and Their Environment

Volume Two explores the questions of social structure, social mobility and class relations. Family and household, the social implications of demographic change, jobs, working and housing conditions, and family relations were all crucial elements in the shaping of group consciousness; these form the main themes of this volume. With chapters on nutrition, patterns of food and drink consumption and leisure activities, a comprehensive overview is built up on the way the social order has been changed. Whilst in certain quarters it may be fashionable to suppose that there is no such thing as society historians, they have had no difficulty in finding their subject. The difficulty, rather, is that an outpouring of research and writing is hard for anyone but the specialist to keep up with the literature or grasp the overall picture. In these three volumes, as is the tradition in Cambridge Histories, a team of specialists has assembled the jigsaw of topical monographic research and presented an interpretation of the development of modern British society since 1750, from three perspectives: those of regional communities, the working and living environment, and social institutions. Each volume is self-contained, and each contribution, thematically defined, contains its own chronology of the period under review. Taken as a whole they offer an authoritative and comprehensive view of the manner and method of the shaping of society in the two centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic change V. 1. Regions And Communities -- V. 2. People And Their Environment -- V. 3. Social Agencies And Institutions. Edited By F.m.l. Thompson. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes. Now in paperback, a three volume thematic interpretation of the development of modern British society from 1750 This chapter does not provide a comprehensive survey of demographic change in Britain between 1750 and 1950.