This masterpiece by Engels reflects his views on the plight of labour classes in England. It is based on his in-depth research and parliamentary reports. In a factual and analytic manner he has voiced his support for fundamental human rights. It is an emphatic protest against the barbarianism of capitalism and industrialization. A prototypical opus!

Reproduction of the original: The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 by Frederick Engels

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.

Written when Engels was 24, and inspired by his time living among the poor in Manchester, this forceful polemic explores the staggering human cost of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England.

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.

The Condition of the Working Class in England is a book by philosopher Friedrich Engels. Essentially a study of the industrial working class in England, the author argues that the Industrial Revolution made workers worse off.