Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperial zenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew were both brought up and educated in Edinburgh. Harvie went via the Open University to become Professor of British and Irish Studies at Tübingen in Germany, becoming a historian of modern Scotland and North Sea oil; from Oxford, Matthew edited the Gladstone Diaries, wrote an award-winning life of the Victorian statesman, and became Editor of the New Dictionary of National Biography in 1992. Colin Matthew died in 1999.