BLACK COUNTRY CLASSICS
Black Country Classics is a new series of publications from The Kates Hill Press in which titles long out of print will be made available to a modern audience.
Number One:
METALLUM MARTIS
by Dud Dudley
First published in 1665, Mettallum Martis sets down the trials and tribulations of Dud Dudley, favourite son of Lord Dudley by his concubine, Elizabeth Tomlinson. Dud Dudley had discovered the secret of smelting iron using coal at a time timber stocks for charcoal burning were in decline. In his lifetime he was to be thwarted in his efforts by lawsuits, flood, and riotous mob. In Mettallum Martis, he puts his side of the story.
A5
booklet, 40 pages
ISBN 1 904552 03 X, £3.00 (40p p&p)
Number
Two:
BLACK
COUNTRY SKETCHES
by Amy Lyons
First published in 1901, the 16 stories in this volume are set in the Wednesbury area about a hundred years prior to that. Drawing from papers that came into her possession and from the extensive works of local historian FW Hackwood, Amy Lyons vividly describes the conditions, superstitions and dangers of life in the Black Country 200 years ago.
A5
comb bound book, 98 pages
ISBN 1 904552 02 1, £5.00 (70p p&p)
Number Three:
INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY - THE BLACK COUNTRY
CHAPTERS
(A BLACK COUNTRY CLASSIC)
Samuel Smiles
Samuel
Smiles’ Industrial Biography -
Iron Workers and Tool Makers was first published in 1863.
In this volume are the chapters on the lives of Dud Dudley and Andrew
Yarranton which will be of particular interest to anyone with an interest in
Black Country history.
That Dud Dudley claimed to have
invented the means of smelting iron from sea coal is fairly widely known.
Details of his life are more obscure.
His capture by parliamentarians during the civil war, and his daring
escape on the eve of his scheduled execution are described here.
Andrew Yarranton was an iron
founder who set up a furnace using Forest of Dean ironstone at Worcester, a
project only possible because of the river Severn, but he is best remembered as
a navigation engineer. He saw the
potential in making the Stour navigable down to the Severn to in effect open up
the Black Country. His project
ultimately failed and it was a hundred years before the
Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal made a water connection to the
region a reality.
Andrew Yaranton’s life and visionary endeavours are described in
detail.
A5 booklet, 40 pages, £3.00 (plus 50p
p&p)
ISBN 978 1 904552 23 9
Number Four:
ALLAN
CHACE AND OTHER POEMS
John Cornfield Jnr.
The
series continues with John Cornfield Junior’s Allan Chace & Other Poems.
This work was first published in 1877 by E.W. Allen, Stationers’ Hall
Court, London. John Cornfield was a
native of Bilston . He was a radical
with a strong sense of social justice which is passionately evident in the epic
length title poem that rails against the iniquities and inequities of the day.
“The writer’s enthusiasm for his subject burns
with a force that makes some of Cornfield’s high profile contemporaries seem
meagre in comparison.”
Paul
McDonald, author of Surviving Sting
Royal
8vo paperback, 108 pages, £7.00 (plus 80p p&p)
ISBN 978 1 904552 24 6
