Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Can we be surprised that a protracted cataclysmic event such as the British Industrial Revolution continues to inspire such interest—from the opening ceremony of the British Olympics to the central subject matter of university courses in economic history? Yet books about the Industrial Revolution only rarely reach the shelves of the bookstores of Hobart, Tasmania where I am based. Emma Griffin's Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution did that in both hardback and paperback probably because it appears to be aimed at a popular audience. Professional historians might be surprised when areas of major controversy are treated in a superficial manner in the book but the reader is certainly engaged by the lively, almost jaunty style. Griffin uses autobiographies to uncover the experiences of working class people. This source has recently been used systematically to understand child employment by Jane Humphries. Griffin does not attempt to provide a similar quantitative analysis but believes that “For all their shortcomings, the autobiographies offer the best way—indeed the only way—to examine the lives of working people during a critical epoch in world history” (10). Statistical results often fail to adequately describe or explain “immiseration” or improvement as the standard of living debate has endlessly demonstrated.