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.

Friedrich Engels' first major work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, has long been considered a social, political, and economic classic. The first book of its kind to study the phenomenon of urbanism and the problems of the modern city, Engels' text contains many of the ideas he was later to develop in collaboration with Karl Marx. In this book, Steven Marcus, author of the highly acclaimed The Other Victorians, applies himself to the study of Engels' book and the conditions that combined to produce it. Marcus studies the city of Manchester, centre of the first Industrial Revolution, between 1835 and 1850 when the city and its inhabitants were experiencing the first great crisis of the newly emerging industrial capitalism. He also examines Engels himself, son of a wealthy German textile manufacturer, who was sent to Manchester to complete his business education in the English cotton mills. Touching upon several disciplines, including the history of socialism, urban sociology, Marxist thought, and the history and theory of the Industrial Revolution, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class offers a fascinating study of nineteenth-century English literature and cultural life.

This account of artisan and working-class society in its formative years, 1780 to 1832, adds an important dimension to our understanding of the nineteenth century. E.P. Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making and re-creates the whole life experience of people who suffered loss of status and freedom, who underwent degradation and who yet created a culture and political consciousness of great vitality.

A history of the common people and the Industrial Revolution: “A true masterpiece” and one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the twentieth century (Tribune). During the formative years of the Industrial Revolution, English workers and artisans claimed a place in society that would shape the following centuries. But the capitalist elite did not form the working class—the workers shaped their own creations, developing a shared identity in the process. Despite their lack of power and the indignity forced upon them by the upper classes, the working class emerged as England’s greatest cultural and political force. Crucial to contemporary trends in all aspects of society, at the turn of the nineteenth century, these workers united into the class that we recognize all across the Western world today. E. P. Thompson’s magnum opus, The Making of the English Working Class defined early twentieth-century English social and economic history, leading many to consider him Britain’s greatest postwar historian. Its publication in 1963 was highly controversial in academia, but the work has become a seminal text on the history of the working class. It remains incredibly relevant to the social and economic issues of current times, with the Guardian saying upon the book’s fiftieth anniversary that it “continues to delight and inspire new readers.”

Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, Friedrich Engels enjoyed the middle-class life of a Victorian gentleman. Yet he was also the co-founder of international communism. This book looks at how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his raucous personal life with this uncompromising political philosophy.

'David Carpenter deserves to replace Sir James Holt as the standard authority, and an unfailingly readable one too.' Ferdinand Mount, TLS 'An invaluable new commentary' Jill Leopore, New Yorker With a new commentary by David Carpenter "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land." Magna Carta, forced on King John in 1215 by rebellion, is one of the most famous documents in world history. It asserts a fundamental principle: that the ruler is subject to the law. Alongside a new text and translation of the Charter, David Carpenter's commentary draws on new discoveries to give an entirely fresh account of Magna Carta's text, origins, survival and enforcement, showing how it quickly gained a central place in English political life. It also uses Magna Carta as a lens through which to view thirteenth-century society, focusing on women and peasants as well as barons and knights. The book is a landmark in Magna Carta studies. 2015 is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta's creation - an event which will be marked with exhibitions, commemorations and debates in all the countries over whose constitutions and legal assumptions the shadow of Magna Carta hangs.

Engels Today marks the centenary of Frederick Engels death through a collection of papers engaging with the thought of Marx's only close collaborator, who was influential in his own right, as well as in his attempted popularisation of 'Marxism'. Specialists in different disciplines here address what is still alive in Engels' contributions to them; they discuss matters that remain influential, or controversial, in the works of this great socialist and thinker, relating to Nature, Science, Women, Revolution, Democracy, Economics, Materialism and Class.