The Urban Working Class in Britain, 1830–1914

This four-volume reset collection examines the distinctive character of working-class life in the cities of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. It focuses on how identities were constructed in families and neighbourhoods, the workplace, leisure pursuits and through the operation of power. A variety of perspectives and voices are represented including external observers, social investigators, and the literate minority of the working class itself. The sources illuminate not only the agendas and prejudices of privileged society but also the biases of the literate minority who came to occupy positions of prominence through social mobility.

The documents are all rare in print form and come from a variety of sources including periodicals, articles in magazines, pamphlets and excerpts from books. The volumes are organized thematically and are prefaced by separate introductions.

The collection will be of value to those engaged in research into social and political history, economics, Victorian studies and urban history.

• Material is rare in print form
• The first collection to give a broad overview of working-class life
• Editorial apparatus includes a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes and endnotes
• Consolidated index in final volume

Related titles

• British Family Life, 1780–1914
• British Masculinity and the YMCA, 1844–1914
• British Socialist Fiction, 1884–1914
• British Trade Unions, 1707–1918
• Chartist Movement in Britain, 1838–1850
• Clothing, Society and Culture in Nineteenth-Century England
• Coal in Victorian Britain
• Democratic Socialism in Britain : Classic Texts in Economic and Political Thought, 1825–1952
• The Life of George Ranken Askwith, 1861–1942
• Respectability and the London Poor, 1780–1870 : The Value of Virtue
• Sanitary Reform in Victorian Britain
• The Metropolitan Poor : Semifactual Accounts, 1795–1910

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