Showing titles in 19th Century

'Captivating, notable, brilliant, thought-provoking' A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 'A vigorous and engaging new study of the Irish famine . . . Richly underpinned by research in contemporary sources and firmly rooted in historical scholarship.' Fintan O'Toole 'Comprehensive, elegantly written...

Published in the 200th anniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo, a witty look at how the French still think they won, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde. Two centuries after the Battle of Waterloo, the French are still in denial. If Napoleon lost on 18 June 1815 (and that's a big 'if') then whoever rules the universe got it wrong. As soon as the cannons stopped firing, French historians began rewriting history.

In this, his best-known work, the controversial American economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen appropriates Darwin's theory of evolution to analyze the modern industrial system. For Veblen, the shallowness and superficiality observed in society results from the tendency to believe that true accomplishment lies in arriving at a condition of ostentatious wealth and status.

The splendid finale to Eric Hobsbawm's study of the 19th century, The Age of Empire covers the area of Western Imperialism and examines the forces that swept the world to the outbreak of World War One - and shaped modern society. 

A deeply engaging and completely original book about nineteenth-century Britain’s fascination with good quality murder. Murder in nineteenth-century Britain was ubiquitous – not necessarily in quantity but in quality. This was the era of penny-bloods, early crime fiction and melodramas for...

Strange and Obscure Stories of the Civil War is an entertaining look at the Civil War stories that don’t get told, and the misadventures you haven’t read about in history books. Share in all the humorous and strange events that took place behind the scenes of some of the most famous Civil War moments.

Bloomsbury presents This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë by Deborah Lutz, read by Christine Rendel The first comprehensive biography of Emily Brontë in over two decades. Emily Jane Brontë was just 27 when she started writing the wayward and electric novel Wuthering Heights. Three years...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE* A Book of the Year in the Times; Telegraph; Spectator; Financial Times; Observer; Waterstones and Daunt Books A dazzling new biography of young Tennyson by the prize-winning, bestselling author of The...

The Fall of the House of Wilde for the first time places Oscar Wilde as a member of one of the most dazzling Anglo-Irish families of Victorian times and in the broader social, political and religious context. A remarkable and perceptive account, this is a major repositioning of our first modern celebrity, a man whose own fall from grace in a trial as public as his father's marked the end of fin de siècle decadence.

In The Great Shame, Thomas Keneally—the bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Schindler’s List—combines the authority of a brilliant historian and the narrative grace of a great novelist to present a gripping account of the Irish diaspora. The nineteenth century saw Ireland lose...

In 1865 a broken Admiral Robert FitzRoy locked himself in his dressing room and cut his throat. His grand meteorological project had failed. Yet only a decade later, FitzRoy’s storm-warning system and ‘forecasts’ would return, the model for what we use today. In an age when a storm at sea was evidence of God’s great wrath, 19th-century meteorologists had to fight against convention and religious dogma.

Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation tracks the unlikely series of events and characters that turned a collection of disparate nations into a British colony in 1914. But the story of Nigeria’s formation begins much earlier, in 1804, when the jihadists launched their attack on countries along the Niger river. What unfolds is a story of conquests and slavery, betrayals and bravery, rivers and riots, victors and vanquished, all of which are central to understanding modern Black struggles.

Written by two of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Imperial Germany and War, 1871-1918 examines the most essential components of the imperial German military system, with an emphasis on such foundational areas as theory, doctrine, institutional structures, training, and the officer corps. In the period between 1871 and 1918, rapid technological development demanded considerable adaptation and change in military doctrine and planning. 

From the best-selling author of Natasha's Dance, The Europeans is a richly enthralling, panoramic cultural history of 19th-century Europe, told through the intertwined lives of three remarkable people: a great singer, Pauline Viardot, a great writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a great connoisseur, Pauline's husband, Louis. Their passionate, ambitious lives were bound up with an array of writers, composers and painters all trying to make their way through the exciting, prosperous and pan-European culture that came about as a result of huge economic and technological change.

The Victorians invented mass entertainment. As the 19th century's growing industrialized class acquired the funds and the free time to pursue leisure activities, their every whim was satisfied by entrepreneurs building new venues for popular amusement. Contrary to their reputation as dour, buttoned-up prudes, the Victorians reveled in these newly created "palaces of pleasure".   

The thrilling story of the nineteenth century's moonshot: An Atlantic-spanning telegraph cable that created the global village and changed the world. In 1854, the American entrepreneur Cyrus Field set out to lay a 2,000-mile telegraph cable across the Atlantic. Nothing like it had ever been...

Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China, and Northeastern Brazil.

Written by one of Israel's most notable scholars, this volume provides a breathtaking history of Israel from the origins of the Zionist movement in the late nineteenth century to the present day.

For the first time, the full story of a crime that has haunted New England since 1873. The cold-blooded ax murder of two innocent Norwegian women at their island home off the coast of New Hampshire has gripped the region since 1873, beguiling tourists, inspiring artists, and fueling conspiracy theorists. The killer, a handsome Prussian fisherman down on his luck, was quickly captured, convicted in a widely publicized trial, and hanged in an unforgettable gallows spectacle.

This remarkable book recreates one of the watershed moments in the history of the Middle East: the ferocious outbreaks of disorder across the Levant in 1860 which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Christians in Damascus. Eugene Rogan brilliantly recreates the lost world of the Middle East under Ottoman rule. This is both an essential book for understanding the emergence of the modern Middle East from the destruction of the old Ottoman world, and a uniquely gripping story.

Delve into the profound insights of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in Pakistan or the Partition of India. This seminal work offers an in-depth analysis of the factors leading to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. Ambedkar's scholarly approach and compelling arguments shed light on the political, social, and religious dynamics that shaped one of the most significant events in South Asian history. A must-listen for anyone seeking to understand the historical context and enduring impact of partition.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Yasmin Mwanza. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Sarah Salih. Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to...

The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.

From the bestselling author of Flags of our Fathers, Flyboys, and The Imperial Cruise, a spellbinding history of turbulent U.S.-China relations from the 19th century to World War II and Mao's ascent. In each of his books, James Bradley has exposed the hidden truths behind America's engagement in...

Van Gogh is a vivid portrait of the great Impressionist painter that traces his life from the Netherlands, where he was born into a family of art dealers, through his years in England, the Hague, and Paris, to his final home in Arles, where he discovered the luminous style of his late paintings before his suicide at the age of thirty-seven.

In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire. Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation...

A history of a century of women, punishment and crime in HM Prison Holloway. Society has never known what to do with its rebellious women. Those who defied expectations about feminine behaviour have long been considered dangerous and unnatural, and ever since the Victorian era they have been removed from public view, locked up and often forgotten about. Many of these women ended up at HM Prison Holloway, the self-proclaimed 'terror to evil-doers'.

Bloomsbury presents The Franco-Prussian War by Stephen Badsey, read by Ric Jerrom. This is an introduction to the Franco-Prussian War, a war that marked the beginning of the creation of modern Europe. The Franco-Prussian War started in 1870 when Otto von Bismarck engineered a war with the French...

Commanded by Captain Howes Norris, the Sharon headed for the whaling grounds of the northwestern Pacific. At Pohnpei Island, 12 men from the Sharon deserted the ship, leaving her critically shorthanded. After steering for New Zealand to recruit more crew, the men on lookout raised a school of sperm whales. Two boats gave chase, each with a crew of six. Five men were left on board the Sharon: Norris, three pacific Islanders, and a Portuguese boy named Manuel.

The Victorians invented the idea of the future. They saw it as an undiscovered country, one ripe for exploration and colonization. And to get us there, they created a new way of ordering and transforming nature, built on grand designs and the mass-mobilization of the resources of the British Empire.

From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and New York Times bestselling author, the essential history of Russian imperialism. “A singularly fascinating account of Russian nationalism through the ages.” —Financial Times In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion...