The "meticulously researched, elegantly argued and deeply humane" sequel to the landmark volume of social history, The Making of the English Working Class ( The New York Times Book Review).This remarkable study investigates the gradual disappearance of a range of cultural customs against the backdrop of the great upheavals of the eighteenth century. As villagers were subjected to a legal system increasingly hostile to custom, they tried both to re...

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 creation...

E.P. Thompson is best known for his seminal historical works, such as The Making of the English Working Class, and his political essays, collected in volumes such as The Poverty of Theory and The Heavy Dancers. Although his poetry is less widely known, it lacks nothing of his famous passion and energy. This is his collected work, edited by Fred Inglis

William Morris—the great 19th-century craftsman, designer, poet and writer—remains a monumental figure whose influence resonates powerfully today. As an intellectual (and author of the seminal utopian News from Nowhere), his concern with artistic and human values led him to cross what he called the “river of fire” and become a committed socialist—committed not to some theoretical formula but to the day by day struggle of working women and men in Britain and to the evolution of his...

Witness Against the Beast is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study in which the renowned social historian E.P. Thompson contends that most of the assumptions scholars have made about William Blake are misleading and unfounded. Brilliantly reexamining Blake's cultural milieu and intellectual background, Thompson detects in Blake's poetry a repeated call to resist the usury and commercialism of the “Antichrist” embodied by contemporary society—to “witness against the beast.”

With Whigs and Hunters, the author of The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson plunged into the murky waters of the early eighteenth century to chart the violently conflicting currents that boiled beneath the apparent calm of the time. The subject is the Black Act, a law of unprecedented savagery passed by Parliament in 1723 to deal with 'wicked and evil-disposed men going armed in disguise'. These men were pillaging the royal forest of deer, conducting a running battle agai...

"Everything characteristic of the late E. P. Thompson—his clarity, humanity, and breadth of learning—is present in this book." — The Financial TimesWitness Against the Beast is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study in which the renowned social historian E. P. Thompson contends that most of the assumptions scholars have made about William Blake are misleading and unfounded. Brilliantly reexamining Blake's cultural milieu and int...

This is the first collection of essays on Chartism by leading social historian Dorothy Thompson, whose work radically transformed the way in which Chartism is understood. Reclaiming Chartism as a fully-blown working-class movement, Thompson intertwines her penetrating analyses of class with ground-breaking research uncovering the role played by women in the movement.Throughout her essays, Thompson strikes a delicate balance between down-to-the-ground accounts of local uprisings, sn...

First Published in 1968. Frank Peel’s The Risings of the Luddites went through at least three stages before it arrived at the present form. It commenced as a series of articles in the Heckmondwike Herald and Liver sedge Weekly Courier, running from 25th January to 6th August 1878.These were reprinted, with some re-arrangement and additions, in book-form in 1880.

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 t...

Games obsessed the Victorian and Edwardian public schools. The obsession has become widely known as athleticism. When it appeared in 1981, this book was the first major study of the games ethos which dominated the lives of many Victorian and Edwardian public schoolboys. Written with Professor Mangan's customary panache, it has become a classic, the seminal work on the social and cultural history of modern sport.

Discover great truths from C. S. Lewis’s mentorsC. S. Lewis was perhaps the greatest Christian thinker of the twentieth century. He delighted us in The Chronicles of Narnia, intrigued us in The Screwtape Letters, mystified us in The Space Trilogy, and convinced us in Mere Christianity. His influence on generations of Christians has been immeasurable.But who influenced C. S. Lewis? What were the sources of his inspiration? Who were his spiritual me...