Ton, City, and Nation England in 1850-1914 [Paperback]

By the outbreak of the First World War, England had become the world's first mass urban society. In just over sixty years the proportion of town-dwellers had risen from 50 to 80 percent, and during this period many of the most crucial developments in English urban society had taken place. This book provides a uniquely comprehensive analysis of those developments - conurbations, suburbs, satellite towns, garden cities, and seaside resorts. Waller assesses the importance of London, the provincial cities, and manufacturing centers. He also examines the continuing influence of the small country town and rural England on political, economic, and cultural growth. Scholarly and readable, this book is a general social history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England, seen from an urban perspective.

[A] very helpful introductory package of information and argument...[P]rovocative and fertile in new ideas and approaches...[D]eserves a warm welcome. --Journal of Historical Geography

[T]he material and ideas set out in this interesting book stimulate as well as inform. --History Today

Waller extracts much and his interpretations question prevalent stereotypes in English historiography and advance the definition of urban history itself...[A] comprehensive view of its subject. --Urban History Review

[A] mine of information, but also a pleasure to read. --Albion