Midland History Summer 2022

The Midland History essay prize is awarded each year to an author from any background of a publishable high-quality article. The author must never have published a peer-reviewed article or book chapter in history or a related subject before. We do not necessarily give a prize each year, but as in 2020, we had a number of strong entries, and two prizes were awarded. First prize was awarded to Sarah Jordan, for her essay ‘Edward Bindon Marten: Sanitation Engineering and Industrial Safety in the Black Country’ derived from her dissertation for the MA in West Midlands History at the University of Birmingham. The article adds to our knowledge of engineers and engineering in the nineteenth century beyond the well-known names such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Bazalgette; it also enhances our understanding of the Black Country, a region which has not been widely explored by historians. The judges noted that Sarah forensically used a wide range of primary sources to reconstruct the life and impact of Marten in his historical context. The second prize went to Janet Berry for ‘Keeping up Appearances in the Nineteenth Century in Moseley, a Middle-Class Birmingham Suburb, 1850–1900’. Based on her University of Birmingham PhD on Moseley, the article brings to life the domestic cultures and aspirations of Victorian middle-class men and women in one local area. With careful attention to recent historical writing, it explores the nature and anxieties surrounding their approaches to the interior decoration of their homes. Three other articles approach different subjects. Elizabeth Norton’s lucid and incisive study: ‘The Continuing Importance of the Manor in Late Sixteenth-Century England: The Example of the Blount Family of the West Midlands’, enhances our understanding of the manor’s continued economic, social and political importance by exploring the influence of a regionally important elite family. Secondly, Samuel Taylor’s, ‘National Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Birmingham’ offers a distinctive way of seeing English and British identity, through the words of George Dawson, Joseph Sturge, John Bright and George Edmonds, by applying, for example, the lenses of race and empire. Finally, ‘Women and Politics in Smethwick, 1918–1929’ by Anna Muggeridge, looks at the campaigns of Christabel Pankhurst and Maude Marshall in Smethwick during the general elections of 1918 and 1929, respectively, and the extent to which their campaigning attracted the support of local women. It is great to see that articles are exploring subjects such as the history of women, gender and race as well as uncovering and reinterpreting how individuals shaped the history of the Midlands. As editor, I welcome submissions which reveal the region’s diverse history over two-thousand years and offer different historiographical and cultural perspectives from researchers at different stages of their careers. The next MIDLAND HISTORY 2022, VOL. 47, NO. 2, 111–112 https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073512