ABSTRACT
The shape of the modern world was appearing in Manchester: urban blight, suburban sprawl; the proletariat and new middle classes. The cultural and educational institutions of the new age were also foreshadowed, from the 18th Century Literary and Philosophical Society to the Owens College. Manchester, and the provincial cities generally, produced a variety of predecessors to the civic universities. Leeds was another of the fast-growing industrial and commercial cities of 19th Century England. The supporters of the Cambridge Extension Lectures, including the Yorkshire Ladies Education Association and the Baines family, proprietors of Leeds’ influential newspaper, transferred their efforts to the establishment of Arts teaching in the college. Nineteenth Century Liverpool possessed great and growing wealth and a significant cultural and intellectual tradition. University College, Liverpool, opened in winter of 1881–82 in the middle of the traditional academic year, a reminder that it did not expect to depend solely upon the traditional sort of student or offer a traditional education.
