The Condition of England was first published in 1909. Faber Finds are reissuing it to celebrate its one hundredth anniversary. Although copies are now hard to come by, it was a success on first publication running quickly into six editions. It has often been likened to Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy though it is more sombre. Charles Masterman, who was in the Liberal Government when he wrote this, provides a penetrating, sceptical and unsettling anatomy of Edwardian England, seeing beneath the imperial splendour a society 'fissured into unnatural plenitude on the one hand and ... an unnatural privation on the other'. This remains a work of acute social analysis.
The book views the 'hungry forties' through the writings of the conservative Thomas Carlyle, the liberal John Stuart Mill and the socialist Friedrich Engels. It is unsurprising that one of the most fraught decades of modern British history produced socio-political literature of such interest and intensity. The rapid growth of industrial cities, the emergence of working-class organizations and rising middle class power as well as revolutions abroad in 1848 made this a tumultuous time. These writers provide extensive, diverse and high quality reflections on the tensions produced in this key period of transition to an industrial, democratic society.
"The condition of England" by Charles F. G. Masterman. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
The Condition of the Working Class in England is one of the best-known works of Friedrich Engels. Originally written in German as Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, it is a study of the working class in Victorian England. It was also Engels' first book, written during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844. Manchester was then at the very heart of the Industrial Revolution, and Engels compiled his study from his own observations and detailed contemporary reports. Engels argues that the Industrial Revolution made workers worse off. He shows, for example, that in large industrial cities mortality from disease, as well as death-rates for workers were higher than in the countryside. In cities like Manchester and Liverpool mortality from smallpox, measles, scarlet fever and whooping cough was four times as high as in the surrounding countryside, and mortality from convulsions was ten times as high as in the countryside. The overall death-rate in Manchester and Liverpool was significantly higher than the national average (one in 32.72 and one in 31.90 and even one in 29.90, compared with one in 45 or one in 46). An interesting example shows the increase in the overall death-rates in the industrial town of Carlisle where before the introduction of mills (1779–1787), 4,408 out of 10,000 children died before reaching the age of five, and after their introduction the figure rose to 4,738. Before the introduction of mills, 1,006 out of 10,000 adults died before reaching 39 years old, and after their introduction the death rate rose to 1,261 out of 10,000.
Polls repeatedly show that trust in, and respect for, the police have declined from the high levels achieved during the 1950s. This work, on the relationship between English policing and culture, revises the received sociological and popular wisdom on the fate that has befallen the English police.
The first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature and translated into thirteen languages, Maggie Gee is writing the Victorian condition-of-England novel for 21st-century Britain. In the first critical study of Gee's work, Mine Özyurt Kiliç identifies the specific social problems her novels address and explains the social consciousness similarities Gee shares with the Victorians. Analyzing how Gee adjusts the condition-of-England novel to reflect contemporary Britain enables Özyurt Kiliç to reveal the accuracy of Gee's rich portraits of Britain. She focuses on Gee's ability to cut across the boundaries of race, class and gender, mix voices from the margin with the majority and challenge and change the idea of the mainstream. As an active, self-conscious and critical participant in the literary world, Gee paints a panoramic view of society. Her critiques of class, race and the world of publishing, allow Özyurt Kiliç to cover a wide range of topics and detail how English fiction shapes and influences, and is shaped and influenced by, the contemporary literary market.
First published in 1973, this work demonstrates how the English churchmen of the nineteenth century moved from a firmly entrenched position in the old social hierarchy to a less definable and insecure position under the rule of the collectivist State run by a professional workforce. Dr Kitson Clark explores the many questions po
In this hugely ambitious history of Britain, Eric Evans surveys every aspect of the period in which the country was transformed into the world’s first industrial power. This was an era of revolutionary change unparalleled in Britain, yet one in which transformation was achieved without political revolution. The unique combination of transition and revolution is a major theme in the book, which ranges across the embryonic empire, the Church, education, health, finance, and rural and urban life. Evans gives particular attention to the Great Reform Act of 1832. The Third Edition includes an entirely new introductory chapter, and is illustrated for the first time.
