A bold reassessment of the major architectural monuments and urban
forms of the world's first industrial city: Manchester
From the mid-eighteenth century to the nineteen-twenties, from the birth
of the Industrial Revolution to the height of Manchester's global
significance and the beginning of its decline, Shock City challenges
the idea that Paris was the "capital of the nineteenth century." Mark
Crinson reorients this issue around the development of industrial
production, particularly cotton and its manufacture by means of steam
power, offering a fascinating and accessibly written account of how new
relations in the industrial economy were manifested through the spaces
and representations of the first industrial city.
Focusing on Manchester's mills and warehouses, its main trading
institution (the Royal Exchange), its magnificent Gothic Revival Town
Hall, and its late Gothic Revival Rylands Library, this book explores
these iconic buildings alongside paintings, prints, maps, and
photographs of the city throughout the period. Crinson interweaves
analysis of buildings and images, urban spaces and new institutions,
technology and industrial pollution to show how these were all the
products of Manchester's newly emergent industrial middle classes, who
remade the city in their image.
Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
