Georgians

The Georgian period is widely remembered as an age of change. Monarchs lost their claim to unchecked rule, Britons travelled the globe and founded colonies abroad, the first industrial revolution reshaped the economy, religious and cultural life were transformed, and Britain took a leading part in the trade in enslaved Africans. This book asks how those developments looked to the people who lived through them, and how their views differ from ours today.

Corfield covers the whole of Georgian life, including politics and empire, culture and society, love and violence, religion and science, and industry and towns. Contemporaries did not agree about what was happening. Some mourned what they believed was being lost, while others welcomed the improvements they saw coming. Those competing views shaped a culture that was at once experimental and resistant to change.

The author draws attention to the continuities that endured through major upheaval. She also shows how new developments met opposition when their effects on people were severe.