Vivien Teasdale's concise and informative guide to the textile industry will be absorbing reading for anyone who wants to learn about its history or to research the career of an ancestor who was a textile worker. In a clear and accessible way she takes readers through the technical, economic and social aspects of the story. She gives a graphic account of the extraordinary growth of the industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and of its decline in the twentieth. In the process she covers the themes and issues that family and local historians will need to understand in order to pursue their research. She describes the inventions that transformed the manufacture of cloth ? the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the power loom ? but she also gives a keen insight into working life in the factories and into the close-knit communities that grew up around them. And she introduces the reader to the variety of national and local records that are available for genealogical research - from census returns, websites and publications to company records and registers, regional archives and museums and the many other resources that can yield fascinating information about the industry and those who worked in it. AUTHOR: Vivien Teasdale has had a long standing interest in the textile industry, in the mill towns of northern England and in the lives of the people who worked in them. She is also a keen family historian. She has published widely on local and family history, in particular in Practical Family History Magazine, and is editor of the Pontefract Family History Society Journal. Her books include Huddersfield Mills, Huddersfield Mill Memories and Yorkshire Disasters. SELLING POINTS: Concise account of the history of the textile industry in England and Wales. Guide to relevant archives, records and websites for family historians. Covers a wide selection of the major companies and textile-working communities nationwide. Describes the lives of textile workers. 50 b/w photos
