19th Century

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, Lucy Worsley has written an Introduction to her Sunday Times Bestselling biography - the book that leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world.

In 1858, 14-year-old Narcisse Pelletier sailed from Marseilles in the French trader Saint-Paul. With a cargo of wine, they stopped in Bombay, then Hong Kong, and from there they set sail with more than 300 Chinese prospectors bound for the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo....

The iconic Australian exploration story - brought to life by Peter FitzSimons, Australia's storyteller....

The first comprehensive biography of the godfather of Australian bushranging–Frank Gardiner–leader of the Lachlan gang and mastermind of the largest gold heist in Australian history.

Most of us today rarely see a dead body. In 19th-century Sydney, when health was precarious and workplaces and the busy city streets were often dangerous, witnessing a death was rather common. And any death that was sudden or suspicious would be investigated by the coroner....

Abraham Lincoln began his presidency admitting that he knew "but little of ships," but he quickly came to preside over the largest national armada to that time, not eclipsed until World War I....

A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals....

Meet the Luddites, a 19th-century brotherhood of rebels who vowed to annihilate every last one of the newfangled spinning machines that cost thousands their jobs....

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial....

Sex workers in 19th-century Melbourne were judged morally corrupt by the respectable world around them. But theirs was a thriving trade, with links to the police and political leaders of the day, and the leading brothels were usually managed by women....

Charismatic, intelligent and handsome, George Scott is unlike any other bushranger. Born into a privileged life in famine-wracked Ireland, Scott's family loses its fortune and is forced to flee to New Zealand....

From the New York Times best-selling, celebrated, and award-winning author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell comes the spellbinding, epic account of the dramatic conclusion of the Civil War....

The terrible conflict that dominated the mid-19th century, the Crimean War, killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire....

The gripping true story of one of the 19th century's bloodiest mutinies....

The 19th century saw the rise of one of the largest, most powerful empires of the modern era. The sun never set on the British Empire, whose holdings spanned the globe, in one form or another....

Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War....

A classic travel-adventure narrative and a fascinating testament of white Americans enslaved abroad....

Scotland Yard. The name itself conjures up a mental picture of old-time detectives in trench coats snooping around a crime scene with a giant magnifying glass....

All the splendours and horrors of Victorian life will be vividly recalled....

At the Vatican Council of 1869-1870, the church made a dramatic effort to set things right by defining the doctrine of papal infallibility. Author John W. O'Malley draws us into the bitter controversies over papal infallibility that at one point seemed destined to rend the church in two....

This panoramic book shows how the Greek Revolution was a demographic upheaval more consequential than the overthrow of a ruler.

Robert Wedderburn (1762-1834/5) was one of the most charismatic, irascible, and radical intellectuals of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world.

The first of two ground-breaking volumes on the Waterloo campaign, this audiobook is based upon a detailed analysis of sources old and new in four languages....

In the fall of 1947, an eighty-four-year-old woman receives an extraordinary invitation. Within is the end of a long journey seeking vindication for a husband who gave his life to the service of the Royal Navy and received, in return, ingratitude.

The controversial American economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen here appropriates Darwin's theory of evolution to analyze the modern industrial system....