First published in 1973. This title aims to use contemporary documents to illustrate the attitudes and relationships of working men towards each other and against other groups in society in the years 1815 to 1850. The material comes under three headings; the analysis of class in terms of economic and political theory; class relations in the years between the end of the French wars and the move into mid-Victorianism; and finally, the response to the more disturbing aspects of class by the appropriate vehicles of social control. This title will be of interest to students of history.

In this wholly original and brilliantly argued book, the author shows that Britons have indeed been preoccupied with class, but in ways that are invariably ignorant and confused.

The book outlines how class is single most important factor in understanding the British army in the period of industrialisation. It challenges the 'ruffians officered by gentlemen' theory of most military histories and demonstrates how service in the ranks was not confined to 'the scum of the earth' but included a cross section of 'respectable' working class men. Common soldiers represent a huge unstudied occupational group. They worked as artisans, servants and dealers, displaying pre-enlistment working class attitudes and evidencing low level class conflict in numerous ways. Soldiers continued as members of the working class after discharge, with military service forming one phase of their careers and overall life experience. After training, most common soldiers had time on their hands and were allowed to work at a wide variety of jobs, analysed here for the first time. Many serving soldiers continued to work as regimental tradesmen, or skilled artificers. Others worked as officers' servants or were allowed to run small businesses, providing goods and services to their comrades. Some, especially the Non Commissioned Officers who actually ran the army, forged extraordinary careers which surpassed any opportunities in civilian life. All the soldiers studied retained much of their working class way of life. This was evidenced in a contract culture similar to that of the civilian trade unions. Within disciplined boundaries, army life resulted in all sorts of low level class conflict. The book explores these by covering drinking, desertion, feigned illness, self harm, strikes and go-slows. It further describes mutinies, back chat, looting, fraternisation, foreign service, suicide and even the shooting of unpopular officers.

First published in 1972, this collection of essays by R. S. Neale focuses on authority, and the responses and challenges to it made by men and women throughout the nineteenth century. Employing a more sociologically-minded approach to history and specifically using a ‘five-class’ model, the book explores features of class and ideology in Britain and its Empire. It includes a range of case studies such as the Bath radicals, the members of executive councils in the Australian colonies, and the social strata in the women’s movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book will be of interest to those studying Victorian history and sociology.

Neil Smelser's Social Paralysis and Social Change is one of the most comprehensive histories of mass education ever written. It tells the story of how working-class education in nineteenth-century Britain—often paralyzed by class, religious, and economic conflict—struggled forward toward change. This book is ambitious in scope. It is both a detailed history of educational development and a theoretical study of social change, at once a case study of Britain and a comparative study of variations within Britain. Smelser simultaneously meets the scholarly standards of historians and critically addresses accepted theories of educational change—"progress," conflict, and functional theories. He also sheds new light on the process of secularization, the relations between industrialization and education, structural differentiation, and the role of the state in social change. This work marks a return for the author to the same historical arena—Victorian Britain—that inspired his classic work Social Change in the Industrial Revolution thirty-five years ago. Smelser's research has again been exhaustive. He has achieved a remarkable synthesis of the huge body of available materials, both primary and secondary. Smelser's latest book will be most controversial in its treatment of class as a primordial social grouping, beyond its economic significance. Indeed, his demonstration that class, ethnic, and religious groupings were decisive in determining the course of British working-class education has broad-ranging implications. These groupings remain at the heart of educational conflict, debate, and change in most societies—including our own—and prompt us to pose again and again the chronic question: who controls the educational terrain?

Cruelty and Companionship is an account of the intimate but darker sides of marriage in Victorian and Edwardian England. Hammerton draws upon previously unpublished material from the records of the divorce court and magistrates' courts to challenge many popular views about changing family patterns. His findings open a rare window onto the sexual politics of everyday life and the routine tensions which conditioned marriage in middle and working class families. Using contemporary evidence ranging from prescriptive texts and public debate to autobiography and fiction, Hammerton examines the intense public scrutiny which accompanied the routine exposure of marital breakdown, and charts a growing critique of men's behaviour in marriage which increasingly demanded regulation and reform. The critical discourse which resulted, ranging from paternalist to feminist, casts new light on the origins and trajectory of nineteenth century feminism, legal change and our understanding of the changing expression of masculinity.

A controversial study of class and social identity in nineteenth-century England.