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Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation

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A history of the extraordinary society that has touched all aspects of British life

From its beginnings in a coffee house in the mid-eighteenth century, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way imaginable. It has sought to influence how Britons work, how they are educated, the music they listen to, the food they eat, the items in their homes, and even how they remember their own history. Arts and Minds is the remarkable story of an institution unlike any other—a society for the improvement of everything and anything.

Drawing on exclusive access to a wealth of rare papers and artefacts from the Society's own archives, Anton Howes shows how this vibrant and singularly ambitious organisation has evolved and adapted, constantly having to reinvent itself to keep in step with changing times. The Society has served as a platform for Victorian utilitarian reformers, purchased and restored an entire village, encouraged the planting of more than sixty million trees, and sought technological alternatives to child labour. But this is more than just a story about unusual public initiatives. It is an engaging and authoritative history of almost three centuries of social reform and competing visions of a better world—the Society's members have been drawn from across the political spectrum, including Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Karl Marx.

Informative and entertaining, Arts and Minds reveals how a society of public-spirited individuals tried to make their country a better place, and draws vital lessons from their triumphs and failures for all would-be reformers today.

ISBN-13: 9780691207612

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 05-16-2023

Pages: 416

Product Dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

Anton Howes is historian in residence at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Howes's accessible and well-paced book captures the changing ambitions and identity of the Society. I read it with pleasure."—Martin Daunton, author of Wealth and Welfare: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1851–1951

"Engaging, well-written, informed, and researched to the hilt."—Joel Mokyr, author of A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy