Amid the current political disputes regarding the character of the Victorian period in England whether economic individualism or social responsibility were the major characteristics of the time this fine, scholarly study, first published in 1945, is again available to provide a benchmark by which to assess the political claims. The scholarly and political value of the work is clear; it is deeply researched, clearly written, and establishes guidelines for contemporary social action and thought. In his perceptive introduction to this edition, Pomper points to lessons the book provides for contemporary politics: the values of careful documentation and research that characterized the work and enhanced the results of Fabianism; the need for a skeptical optimism in social thought; and an understanding of the contrasting fate of socialism in Great Britain and the United States.

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Amid the current political disputes regarding the character of the Victorian period in England--whether economic individualism or social responsibility were the major characteristics of the time--this fine, scholarly study, first published in 1945, is again available to provide a benchmark by which to assess the political claims. The scholarly and political value of the work is clear; it is deeply researched, clearly written, and establishes guidelines for contemporary social action and thought. In his perceptive introduction to this edition, Pomper points to lessons the book provides for contemporary politics: the values of careful documentation and research that characterized the work and enhanced the results of Fabianism; the need for a skeptical optimism in social thought; and an understanding of the contrasting fate of socialism in Great Britain and the United States.

First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1945, this volume compares the theoretical panic and practical confusion of its present time to that of the eighteen-eighties and looks to it for direction and inspiration. Following the decade, the Reynolds’ Newspaper commented that "Eighteen seventy-nine is gone, and we all have reason to be thankful that it is now only a record". The decade faced challenges in agriculture, a bitter parliament, war on two continents, stagnant commerce and changing social norms. 1879 in particular was a year combining more circumstances of misfortune and depression than any within general experience at the time. Then, as in 1945, there was a new sense of being in the dark, surrounded by the unknown. H.M. Lynd hoped to gain some insight into possible directions of change from a study of this critical period.

In the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century a variety of forces emerged which changed society in many profound and subtle ways. The Making of Modern English Society from 1850 uses the findings of recent historical and sociological research contemporary literature, and a wide range of historical sources to form a clear picture of the main patterns of the social changes which took place in this turbulent period. Jane Roebuck shows how in these hundred years the whole fabric of society altered more rapidly and radically than in ant preceding century. She gives and account of the dramatic change which occurred in all spheres of national liked. She demonstrates how the drift towards socialism, which began in the nineteenth century, gathered momentum in the twentieth and how massive social chance was on produce of the two world wars. In the field of economics, the author considers the development of the maturing but still primitive industrial economy of the mid-nineteenth century into a modern economy based on mass production and mass consumption. She also describes the change in emphasis from desire for world power to concern for domestic prosperity and welfare services.