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Yes, today would be Jane Austen’s birthday, and to celebrate it, we’ll be doing a giveaway to 6 lucky tweeters. International readers, keep your eyes on @OWC_Oxford and when you see, “It’s Jane Austen’s 235th birthday!” just retweet it before 3pm GMT! Live in the US? Follow @OUPblogUSA. You’ll have until 3pm ET. Winners will be announced on Friday
By Nigel Bradley
“Knowledge is Power” is a quotation that dates back to 1597 and is attributed to Sir Francis Bacon. And there lies the reason to conduct market and social research. Surveys, focus groups and observation allow us to build gaps in our knowledge, to identify demand and thereby supply what is needed (or wanted). Research information minimises risks in decision making, it saves money, increases productivity and is generally valuable.
London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology. It centres on hundreds of interviews conducted by Mayhew with London’s street traders, beggars, and thieves, which provide unprecedented insight into the day-to-day struggle for survival on London’s streets in the 19th century.
Defoe’s interest in the subject knew no bounds; natural disaster was for him a favourite ground on which to explore questions of faith and history. In The Storm (1704) he had described the devastation wrought by extreme weather the previous year and the book was in many ways an early dress rehearsal for the Journal, assembling ‘the most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters’ that arose from a single, terrifying event.
John Welshman on plimsolls, poverty, and policy during the Second World War.
An exerpt from The Oxford History of Britain.
It is in the nature of things that sexual behaviour that does not offend agreed norms makes no special stir. Even so it may be revealing. People masturbate, woo, marry, copulate, and give birth. Of these events the law requires only that marriages and, in Shakespeare’s time, baptisms rather than births be recorded. Analysis of such records may in itself illuminate the sexual mores of the period and, indeed, of Shakespeare and his family.
What are your New Year’s Eve traditions?
Rab Houston, author of ‘Scotland: A Very Short Introduction’ looks at why Scottish devolution has worked.
An excerpt from The Oxford Companion to Black British History
Dr Tony Wright MP answers a few questions on British Politics: A Very Short Introduction.
Nancy Astor became the first woman to take her seat in the British House of Commons.