The Bleak Age

John Lawrence Le Breton Hammond (1872-1949) and Lucy Barbara Hammond (1873-1961) were historians and authors known for their works on social history, particularly the plight of the working class and the origins of social discontent arising from the working class experience. Married in 1901, both had received a classical education, and they were most well-known for their trilogy composed of The Village Labourer (1911), The Town Labourer (1917), and The Skilled Labourer (1919), which surveyed the experiences of the working class at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Both were active in social causes. Barbara was an early feminist, and Leonard worked as a journalist for papers such as The Nation and the Manchester Guardian. He is particularly associated with the New Liberalism of the Edwardian period.

Their book The Bleak Age, published by Penguin first in 1934, and then in a revised form in 1947, of which this is an example, was an abridgement of their 1930 book The Age of the Chartists. This work, as described in the preface to The Bleak Age, was a "study of the social life of England in the [eighteen] thirties and forties…, giving special attention to the range and the character of the popular discontent that distinguished those years." They selected those parts which had the greatest import for the issues created by an increase in leisure in the mid-twentieth century.

This volume has the added interest of having belonged to Romanian-Canadian poet Irving Latyon, with his signature on the title page, and dated 1948.

This copy may be described as being in Fair condition. There is some age-related discolouration to the covers and pages, and a significant crease to the front cover. The spine is quite worn, and there is a tear to the top of the front cover where it joins the spine of about one inch in length. The pages are all present, and the text is clear and readable.