Everyday Mobilities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Diaries

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 1-20

3. The Value of Diary Writing

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 21-53

4. Mobility Change over Time

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 55-80

5. Location Matters

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 81-101

6. Mobility, Family, and the Life Course

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 103-125

7. Gendered Mobilities: The Female Experience

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 127-153

8. Money Matters

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 155-174

9. The Significance of Journey Purpose

   • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

   Pages 175-194

10. Immobility

    • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

    Pages 195-214

11. Conclusions

    • Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

    Pages 215-225

12. Back Matter

    Pages 227-239

    PDF

This book uses diaries written by ordinary British people over the past two centuries to examine and explain the nature and extent of everyday mobilities, such as travel to school, to work, to shop or to visit friends, and to explore the meanings attached to these mobilities. After a critical evaluation of diary writing, the ways in which mobility changed over time, interacted with new forms of transport technology, and varied from place to place are examined. Further chapters focus on the roles of family and life course, gender, income and class, and journey purpose in shaping mobilities, including immobility. It is argued that easy and frequent everyday mobilities were experienced by most of the diarists studied, that travellers could exercise their own agency to adapt easily to new forms of transport technology, but that factors such as gender, class, and location also created significant mobility inequalities.

• Life Writing
• mobility studies
• travel
• diaries
• British history
• British and Irish Literature
• Literature and Mobility

“Everyday Mobilities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Diaries provides a unique and fascinating account of the diversity of everyday mobility during a time of dramatic socio-technological change. What emerges from Colin and Marilyn Pooley’s detailed empirical study of diary material is not so much how everyday life was changed noticeably by technological change but how people quickly adapted to new modes of getting around in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This book will appeal equally to historians of mobility and researchers studying everyday life in the modern era.”
—Clare Holdsworth, Professor of Social Geography, Keele University, UK 

• Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

  Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

Colin G. Pooley is Emeritus Professor of Social and Historical Geography in the Environment Centre and the Centre for Mobilities Studies (CeMoRe), Lancaster University, UK. His research focuses on the social geography of Britain and continental Europe since circa 1800, with recent projects focused on residential migration, travel to work, everyday mobilities and sustainable transport.  

Marilyn E. Pooley is an Historical Geographer. She was formerly a Teaching Associate in the Environment Centre at Lancaster University, UK, and in retirement is researching (with Colin Pooley) everyday mobility in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain using life writing.