In Library Matthew Battles says that “the appetite for books in large quantities was already whetted by the time the printing press made its appearance”
In the years just before the railways came to Britain a stage coach left Manchester for London every 15 minutes, 24/7
It was not a comfortable journey. The only protection from the elements for outside passengers came from their sturdy woollen great coats, hats or blankets
When the stage got to Topley Pike the outside passengers had to get down - & sometimes they had to help push the conveyance up the hill
Few women travelled this way
You could fill whole libraries with books & academic papers which analyse the effects of the coming of the railways; I personally have never come across one which looks at the role played by the railway in the liberation of women – but then train spotting has always been a boys' thing
When the London to Manchester railway finally arrived, shop windows in Manchester were filled with popular pictures of mournful horses: What is to become of us?
In fact, as FML Thompson pointed out in The Rise of Respectable Society, there was a three- or fourfold increase in horse-drawn traffic on Victorian roads because of the railways' success in generating new traffic, for all the feeder services bringing freight & passengers to the railway stations were horse-drawn
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Nay, … hast thou always worn clothes … rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine sat snug, defying all variations of Climate? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys; half buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls and mudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens … and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool
