Longlisted for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2022A spectacular biography of the great designer entrepreneur abolitionist and beacon of the Industrial Revolution from acclaimed historian and Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum Tristram HuntJosiah Wedgwood perhaps the greatest English potter who ever lived epitomized the best of his age. From his kilns and workshops in StokeonTrent he revolutionized the production of ceramics in Georgian Britain by marrying technology with design manufacturing efficiency and retail flair. He transformed the luxury markets not only of London Liverpool Bath and Dublin but of America and the world and helping to usher in a mass consumer society. Tristram Hunt calls him the Steve Jobs of the eighteenth century.But Wedgwood was radical in his mind and politics as well as in his designs. He campaigned for free trade and religious toleration read pioneering papers to the Royal Society and was a member of the celebrated Lunar Society of Birmingham. Most significantly he created the ceramic Emancipation Badge depicting a slave in chains and inscribed Am I Not a Man and a Brother that became the symbol of the abolitionist movement.Tristram Hunts hugely enjoyable new biography strongly based on Wedgwoods notebooks letters and the words of his contemporaries brilliantly captures the energy and originality of Wedgwood and his extraordinary contribution to the transformation of eighteenthcentury Britain.