Family history books with Helen Tovey & Rachel Bellerby

Dating By Design 1840-1915: A New Way of Dating Old Photographs

by Stephen Gill

With example images on every page, and a check list of items to look out for (covering the photographic format, fashions, hairstyles and dates during which the studio was in operation), the author provides the reader with a primer and an approach to put into practice to help to determine a closer date range within which a family photo may have been taken. It is an educational read, which encourages you to learn by repetition, the goal being that by the end of the book you have mastered a simple and effective strategy to help to date your family photos. Written in a light-hearted, though informative, manner, it is also a very engaging read, and the colourised enlarged photos throughout the book are quite arrestingly vivid, bringing their sitters to life in a way that the black and white originals perhaps don’t. A very good book for improving your photo-dating hands-on research skills.

• Published by Family History Books (hardback) £18.99. ISBN: 9781906280604. HT

Merchants

by Edmond Smith

Subtitled ‘The Community That Shaped England’s Trade and Empire’, the book sets out its stall to demonstrate how the contacts, community, and astonishing confidence of the merchant class were so central to the development of early modern England and its subsequent role on the world stage.