Villages and towns in the Victorian era saw an expansion in educational provision, and witnessed the rise of the elementary teaching profession, often provided by local clergymen. This book investigates the social and economic relationships of such clergymen and teachers who worked co-operatively and at times in competition with each other.

Contrary to its popular image as dull and stodgy, the Victorian period was one of revolutionary change. In its politics, its art, its economic aff airs, its class relationships, and in its religion, change was constant. A half-century after Queen Victoria's death, it was said that she was born in one world and died in another. Th e most interesting and valuable studies of the period take the long view, as does Schlossberg, in his fascinating analysis of religious life in this period. For the Victorians, religion was not cordoned off from the push and shove of real life. Th e early evangelicals got off to a shaky start, beset by hostility, but the movement spread within the churches despite the suspicion in which it was held. Evangelicals, frequently called Puritans by those who opposed them, called for fundamental reforms in both the Church and the society; a social ethic was part of their program of religious renewal. Th eir moral sense explains the social activism of both Church of England Evangelicals and Dissenters, including the half-century crusade for the abolition of slavery. Schlossberg shows how religion in England dealt with such issues as science and the eff ect of German scholarship on religious thinking. Church history cannot simply be explained by its response to external forces as much as by the internal responses to those challenges. Th e nature of the religious enterprise itself, its theologians, clergy, lay people--like all people and all institutions--all responded with alternatives. Schlossberg helps us understand the Victorian period, as well as the increasing secularity of English life today.

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 Rise of Respectable Society' offers a new map of this territory as revealed by close empirical studies of marriage, the family, domestic life, work, leisure and entertainment in 19th century Britain.

When a French doctor is imprisoned for eighteen years, he is released and united with his daughter, whom he has never met. The story of their life in London, and the conflict between her husband and the people who imprisoned her father, bring back ghosts from the past. Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities is known for its opening sentence, but the novel raises questions that explore income inequality, globalization, and the fate of civil rights when a government dissolves, topics we still grapple with today. This volume explores the life and work of Charles Dickens, focusing particularly on the theme of class conflict in the novel, and includes viewpoints on class conflict and income inequality in the present day, including the role that technology plays in increasing income inequality and class conflict, and the generational nature of class conflict.

First published in 1971. The book examines the presentation of the urban and industrial working classes in Victorian fiction. It considers the different types of working men and women who appear in fiction, the environments they are shown to inhabit, and the use of phonetics to indicate the sound of working class voices. Evidence is drawn from a wide range of major and minor fiction, and new light is cast on Dickens, Mrs Gaskell, Charles Kingsley, George Gissing, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Morrison. This book would be of interest to students of literature, sociology and history.

A study of alliances between prostitutes and femminists and their clashes with medical authorities and police.

"That Thorpe Regis was theirs and the London coach must stop there were facts as undeniable as the Church, the Squire's house, and the Red lion itself, and needed no comment. Even facts, however, come to an end sometimes. There arrived a day when the railway, which had gradually been drawing nearer and nearer, reached Underham, a little out-of-the-world village about five miles west of Thorpe, which had hitherto looked humbly up to its more important neighbour, and without a murmur had carried its little tribute of weekly budgets to deposit at the door of the Red Lion. So readily does human nature accommodate itself to added greatness, that Underham was the first to claim from Thorpe the homage which all these years it had yielded ungrudgingly, and beyond a doubt it gave additional sharpness to the stings of humiliation endured by the fallen village, to know that its sudden depression had been caused by the prosperity of its rival..." 'Thorpe Regis is a romance novel set in a small English village. The falling fortunes of the village serve to dissuade the return of those who leave town, except for the occasional visit by those who have family. One such person is Anthony, come for a visit, much to the delight of the Squire's daughter Winifred, though she is guarded about her secret. But when he announces his departure, she may have no choice but to reveal her true feelings...