Comprising of:
Module summary assignment
Topic assignment
[Learning Outcomes 1-4]

Key Information Set:
100% coursework

The module covers British society, including aspects of the British Empire, from c.1750-1850. It examines consumer society, industrialisation and social change. The theme of 'pleasure and pain' is used to consider the experiences of people in this period of profound transformation. Consumer society brought coffee-houses, clubs and societies, pleasure gardens, print culture, and the middle-class cultivation of science, art and literature. And yet consumer products like sugar and chocolate could come from slave plantations in the Empire. An agricultural revolution sustained the rise in population and enabled urbanisation but for some this meant the loss of common land to enclosure and the harshness of the 'Highland clearances'. New factories could mass produce goods and disposable income for young women, but the labour-force drew extensively on the use of child labour and new regimes of work discipline. Social reform movements developed, but the Poor Law of 1834 and the workhouse could be feared. Calls for political reform were met by the Peterloo massacre and the transportation of the Tolpuddle martyrs, while the 'Great Reform Act' of 1832 was challenged by the Chartist movement. By 1851, and the display of products in the Great Exhibition and the 'shilling days' that brought a mass attendance, what kind of class society had been created? The module draws on a wide range sources from the period including literature, painting, prints and political tracts.

Workshops introduce the main themes and arguments of the module content together with discussion and analysis of a range of written and visual source materials. The independent study element should be used for background reading, reading for the workshops, and research and preparation of the written assignments.

Key Information Set:
16% scheduled teaching and learning activities
84% guided independent learning

Library for books, journals, newspapers and periodicals including subscription online resources such as Blackwell Reference Online and Oxford Reference Online.

The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

Berg, Maxine Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (OUP, 2007)
Griffin, Emma Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution (Yale UP, 2013)
Humphries, Jane Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (CUP, 2011)
McCalman, Iain (ed) An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (OUP,1999)
Morgan, Kenneth The Birth of Industrial Britain: 1750-1850 (Longman, 2nd edn., 2011)
Porter, Roy Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (Penguin, 2001)
Sassatelli, Roberta Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics (Sage, 2007)