Abstract

"Friedrich Engels' first major published 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, it contains in preliminary form many of the ideas Engels was later to develop in collaboration with his close friend and associate, Karl Marx. Here 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: the city of Manchester, site and center of the first Industrial Revolution; the period between 1835 and 1850 when the city and its inhabitants were experiencing the first great crisis of the newly emerging system of industrial capitalism; and 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, among them the history of socialism, urban sociology, Marxist thought, and the history and theory of the Industrial Revolution, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class also offers a fascinating study of nineteenth-century English literature and cultural life." -- Book jacket.