Black Country lites

This is a study of the Black Country in the nineteenth-century, when the area was at the forefront of Britain's industrial development. The strength of this provincial industrial lite suggests the need to re-examine the influential view that Victorian Britain's social development was dominated by London and by the land, the professions and finance. More than a narrowly focused local study, Richard Trainor's extensively researched and well-integrated analaysis of the urban lites of the region is an important contribution to our understanding of Victorian society.