The Age of the Automobile: A Social History of 20th Century Britain

by Harold Perkin

This lively work offers a wide-ranging account of the social history of the motorised age, and of the machine which has reshaped the character and development of the modern world. It places the development of the car (and of its more sinister cousins the tank and the war plane) in their context and impact on society in peace and war from the Edwardian period onwards. The author shows that automobiles in particular represented a modernity which promised to the individual power over time, space, and their own personal machine. They were emblems, too, of sex appeal, and of the new consumerism. They were prismatic of modern society itself, and a futuristic key to its social history. And as they came down in price over time they opened up the world anew to the middle and then the working class. This is a social history of modern Britain at its most focussed, on issues that really matter.

278 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

A specialist in English social history, Harold James Perkin was a Lecturer in Social History at the University of Manchester (1951–1965), then a Senior Lecturer (1965–1967), a Professor (1967–1984) in Social History and Director of the Centre for Social History (1974–84) at the University of Lancaster, and an Emeritus Professor of History at Northwestern University, Illinois (1985–1997).